Irish Crime Fiction, Eh? Now That Is A Novel Idea …

John Spain, literary editor at the Irish Independent, lamented the State of the Irish Novel back at the end of December, the gist of his piece running thusly:

“In that sense 2007 was another year in Irish fiction when not much emerged that was new or engaged with Celtic Tiger Ireland … It was more of the same misery, sexual unhappiness and navel-gazing. Isn’t it time our best writers got over themselves and started to tackle the Ireland of today? […] Non-fiction writers like historian Roy Foster and economist David McWilliams have been trying to capture the changes of the last 20 or 30 years in their most recent books. But so far our fiction writers – even the gifted [Anne] Enright – have dodged the challenge. It’s time to move on, guys.”

Erm, John? You might want to try, in no particular order, Gene Kerrigan, Ken Bruen, Tana French, Declan Hughes, Brian McGilloway, Andrew Nugent, Ingrid Black, Sean Moncrieff, Mia Gallagher … Actually, it’s a pretty long list of diverse stories and storytellers, with a common theme being that they’re all investigating what makes the Ireland of today tick. Just thought we’d mention it …