Halfway there…

And boy are things messy. I didn’t like the experimental pov I’d set up – telling the story of Faith through notebooks read and research done by her daughter Joy, so I flipped into the first-person and am not liking that any better.

One thing that can be said for Nanowrimo is that it allows you to experiment, flip things around and keep on going, knowing that you can fix it some other time if you care enough about what you end up with to do so. Another thing is that you begin to recognise pitfalls in your own style. In this story there’s been way too much preamble to a bank heist that is only the start of my main character’s solo crime career. I know I can go back and cut it all, but I’ve wasted time on it, and while it has generated plenty of words, it’s irksome.

Right now I’m so ticked off with myself that I’ve decided to close google docs for the time being and see if sleeping on it will help any. Grrr.

I will start afresh tomorrow with the warning to myself that THOU SHALT NOT HAVE TOO MUCH EXPOSITION. IT GIVETH THEE WORDS APLENTY BUT IT DETRACTETH FROM THE PACING MOST ABOMINABLY (Or: shut up and have someone shoot someone or something).The biblical all-caps warning is the one that I shall post-it to my monitor. If I can find a post-it. It’s been that kind of day.

To cheer myself up with the promise of something good to read in the future I checked Nielsen for a release date for the next Alex Barclay novel, only to find that it’s listed as August 2010. Ah boo says I, but elsewhere on the interwebz it say 26th of November 2009 and that is soon. Imminent, even. I am confuzzled. Also, weirdly, the book title has always been listed as Black Run but the cover art on Amazon has a big bold Tainted on the cover. Curiouser and curiouser. Anyway, whenever and whatever it’s called I want it. And all the better if I’ve finished my nanoing by then as it would be a pretty good reward-read. We shall see.

Damn I’m such a nerd. Oh, and by the way, killing off a bipolar character’s shrink (the plot I’ve seen mentioned) is not only ultra evil (mwhahahahaha etc.), but an excellent premise. Should be fun.

Best of 2008

Okay, seeing as it’s the last day of the year, I decided to have some fun thinking about all the books I’d read this year, all the best-of lists I’ve seen over the past month, and both of those activities led to me making my own year end “best of” lists.

I’ve broken stuff up into categories that are pretty arbitrary, and as you’ll see some categories simply have a “best” rather than a Top 5 – just the way it worked out if there weren’t enough notable books (that I came across) to pad things out.

Top 5 Crime novels of 2008

1. Blood Runs Cold by Alex Barclay, for reasons detailed elsewhere, and because nothing else appeared in the latter days of ‘08 to knock it off its perch. It is being (criminally) discounted by some booksellers at the minute so there’s no excuse not to read it. (Edit Jan ‘09 – ooh, the prologue is up on the nicely revamped Alex Barclay homepage here. Click on the book cover to be taken to it.)

2. Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, because it brought me back to the first time I read Gorky Park, and it has every right to become as much of a classic.

3. The Likeness by Tana French, again for reasons detailed elsewhere, prime among them mixing a police procedural with The Secret History and managing not to be in the slightest bit naff.

4. Nemesis by Jo Nesbo, because the man can do no wrong, and this was every bit as gripping as the previous two.

5. When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson, another outing for Jackson Brodie, this one is every bit as good as the first (Case Histories), and miles better than the second (One Good Turn).

Top 5 Novels of 2008

1. The Believers by Zoe Heller, no question about it. Hilarious, painful, moving and at times uncomfortable reading, there wasn’t a box that this one didn’t tick.

2. The Girl Who Stopped Swimming by Joshilyn Jackson, southern gothic family drama meets murder in a tale that can’t be called a thriller as it’s more about the people than the crime. Funny, touching and downright scary in places.

3. The Dissident by Nell Freundenberger, a tangled and memorable tale about art, deception and culture clashes.

4 A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz, my own favourite on the Booker shortlist this year. A stunning debut, and ties with Heller in the black humour stakes.

5. The Monsters Of Templeton by Lauren Groff, because it stuck around in my head for a long time after I finished it, and because it managed to add something different to the “returning home to a small town” story that has been played out many times before in other novels.

Speculative Fiction Book of the Year

Anathem by Neal Stephenson, because it’s as epic and brilliant as you’d expect.

Kids Book of the Year

The Name of this Book is Secret by Pseudonymous Bosch. Hands-down the cleverest, funniest, page-turniest (?)  and downright coolest book for kids I have read since I was one  myself.

Funniest Book of the Year

Dilbert 2.0 by Scott Adams, 20 years of Dilbert cartoons in one beautifully-bound book (with a bonus dvd), unwrapping this on Christmas day sent me to geek and hilarity heaven.

Honorable mention: When you are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris. Not as funny as he can be, but still good for a few giggles.

Non-fiction  Book of the Year

Bad Science by Ben Goldacre, for a geek like me, the combination of woo-dismantling and experiments to try at home coupled with Goldacre’s wit and erudition made this an easy choice.

And finally, the inaugaral inductee into the “Publishers, what were you thinking?!” Hall of Shame!

Turkey of the Year (all categories)

Sweetheart by Chelsea Cain. Just plain nasty, in every sense. Not a single redeeming feature, other than the fact that it has a last page.

Runner up (or should that be dishonorable mention?): No time for Goodbye by Lynwood Barclay – one of those books that sells by the truckload and gets lots of press, for seemingly no good reason. “Twists” that are signposted in mile-high letters for anyone with a passing familiarity with crime books, and characters with simply unbelievable psycho(path)logy. Not pretty, and not fun.

Thriller of the year…

Yes, I know it’s only November, but this book came out last week, and I spent a couple of evenings with it before curling up on the couch yesterday afternoon to finish it (when I should have been writing, but I figure my word-count is buffered enough to allow for the occasional treat).

The book? Blood Runs Cold by Alex Barclay.

The why? Well, I mentioned before how I was looking forward to this, and me looking forward to books is not always a good thing, as those expectations of mine can get quite high (I’m a pain in the ass like that…), in this case the expectation was ratcheted up by the fact that I’d heard the prologue read aloud by the author at the Crime Weekend earlier this year and it was a great hooky intro (stealing that from curiouserx2 as it’s apt).

I was also told I’d love Ren Bryce, the main character, and so there was that prediction to check out too.

So before I go any further, I’d best explain what a thriller has to do to get Best of the Year from me:

The characters must be well-drawn, the dialogue must be pacy, sound ‘real’, and it helps if some of it is witty. There must be no lazy tossing about of psychiatric disorders to explain away the bad guy. The plot must be tight, and I should not be able to guess everything related to whodunnit and why (basically, a really good thriller will keep surprising me right up til the last page). I should not want to put the book down, and there are bonus points for a (very rare) desire to re-read it and see how all the pieces fit in retrospect. Not asking for much, am I?

Blood Runs Cold ticks all the boxes above, and then some.

Ren Bryce is not your standard conflicted/brilliant FBI agent (we’ve met a lot of them in fiction), she is smart, funny, caring (despite herself) and desperate to prove she’s good at her job (though no-one else doubts that), She also has a marked tendency towards self-sabotage which is an interesting twist, and serves to add a nice big dollop of tension to the plot.

The plot itself is simple, on the surface, there is a dead FBI agent and Ren is tasked with leading the team investigating the murder. Only problem is, there’s no body. Ostensibly that’s it, and for many writers that would be enough. As the book powers on, more intrigues come to the surface, a missing (presumed dead) person, a file on the dead agent’s desk that poses more questions than it answers and a spate of bank robberies of a particularly nasty nature.

It is to Barclay’s credit that none of these threads gets dropped for a moment as the book rushes headlong to a conclusion that is both extremely satisfying and nothing like what I’d expected.

I knew from reading Darkhouse (with its brilliant opening sequence) and The Caller that Barclay is a class act, but this book, her third, should send her already rising star stratospheric. And while that may seem hyperbolic, I can assure you it’s not. This book is hands-down the best thriller I have read this year, and I can’t see anything else touching it in the month and a bit there is left of 2008.

So if you’re looking for something to read that won’t let you down, grab this and give yourself a treat.

Irish Crime Writers…

..are a lovely bunch of people.

Just home from “Crime Weekend” which spread itself over two days in Dun Laoghaire town hall. It was part of the Sindo Books Festival, and as a crime maven it was all I was interested in, apart from possibly getting myself arrested for throwing eggs at Martin Amis (which seemed like a probable waste of energy (and eggs), there being much better things to be arrested for).

I couldn’t attend last night’s session (and so missed Tana French, which I am still bummed out about) but today’s line-up was unmissable. There was John Connolly (who needs no introduction), the charming Declan Burke (who wrote “The Big O”  among others – and if you haven’t read him you’re missing out!), the quietly witty (well, actually, pretty hilarious) Brian Mc Gilloway (there must be a post here somewhere about the Inspector Devlin books, if not I’ll rectify it), the nice-and-normal-seeming-until-she talks-about-killing-the bad-guys Arlene Hunt, and the smart and funny (and very down to earth) Alex Barclay. 

I caught most of Declan Hughes interviewing John Connolly which was extremely interesting, though I’m sad to say I missed his reading from his next book “The Lovers” (though my colleague Karina assures me it was “listen through your fingers, truly chilling” stuff) (yay!).

The panel discussion with the four mentioned above was about sex and violence in crime books – subtitled “How far is too far?” and started with each of the authors reading an excerpt from their work that was heavy on the violence/sex. Actually, only John Connolly opted to read a sex scene, and bless him, his mammy was in the audience, so he flew through the scene (despite an unempathetic audience member telling him to slow down) with a face that was pure scarlet. I felt for the man, kudos for bravery.  They then went on to discuss the ethics of crime writing, the controversial comments by Ian Rankin last year (controversial, but also kinda true) about women crime writers and the gross-out factor, how hard/easy it is to write violent scenes, or sex scenes etc. All very informative and interesting. 

Nobody asked them to name books that they felt went too far – which may have been fun to hear, instead questions were about the concept of evil (um, I think that was it) and whether writing scenes of depravity affects them physically (I kid you not, there’s always some delicate flower out there…).

Afterwards I had a nice chat with Peter who has a really cool crime blog here (and I will be checking out those Scando writers you told me about, thanks again!) and a few words with Declan Burke (his blog here (it even links to mine *is chuffed*)), who is a lovely bloke. John Connolly signed a book for me and threw in some nice extras, and Alex Barclay and myself had a chat about fortune tellers (of all things) and she promised to send me out a proof of the new book (which is surely above and beyond the call of duty, but I’m not complaining!).

All in all a wonderful afternoon – the festival seems to have been a great success, so I’m already looking forward to next year, but more than that I’m looking forward to reading the new books from all the people on the panel today. Ah, bliss….