Category Archives: Crime fiction

A double shot of Tartan noir at the 2013 Melbourne Writers Festival

Posted on August 27, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Where the Dead Men Go coverLast Saturday I had the pleasure of interviewing two great Scottish crime writers, Doug Johnstone and Liam Mcilvanney, for a session on Tartan noir at the 2013 Melbourne Writers Festival.

We covered a lot of territory in our allotted hour, including what, if anything, ‘Tartan noir’ means, the history of Scottish crime writing, and the upcoming 2014 referendum on independence and its implications for the arts in Scotland.

ABC Big Ideas TV and Slow TV filmed the event. Apart from the fact I got to hear the immortal words, “sound check in ten mister Nette”, it means I’ll be able to put up a link to the show when it goes live instead repeating the contents of the session on this site.

That said I did want to do quick reviews of both their books, Mcilvanney’s Where the Dead Men Go, and Johnstone’s Gone Again.

First up, Where Dead Men Go.

This is the second in a series featuring the character of Gerry Conway, a cynical newspaper journalist pounding the mean streets of Glasgow. In the first book, All the Colours of the Town, Conway is looking for a major story and finds it when he stumbles across evidence that a major Scottish political leader has had past connections to Irish loyalist paramilitaries.… Read more

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Crime fiction, Noir fiction, Tartan Noir

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Tartan noir at the Melbourne Writers Festival

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 2 Comments

Where the Dead Men Go coverOn Saturday, August 24, I’ll be hosting a panel on Scottish crime writing, titled Tartan Noir, as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival.

James Ellroy coined the phrase Tartan Noir to describe his Scottish counterpart Ian Rankin.

For the panel I’ll be interviewing two great Scottish crime writers, Liam MciIvanney and Doug Johnston.

MciIvanney is the author of two books, All the Colours of the Town, published in 2009, and Where the Dead Men Go, which is due for release later this month (and which is being published locally in Australia through Allen and Unwin).

Johnston has authored five books, the most recent of which is Gone Again.

Both are terrific writers and I’ll be talking to them about this particularly Scottish form of literature, its origins, the duality of its anti-heroes and how it reflects modern life in Scotland.

Due to popular demand, the event has been moved to a larger venue, but tickets are going fast, so if you’re interested in attending, get in quick.

It will kick off at 4pm at Cinema 1, ACMI, and is supported by GREAT Britain Arts 13, presented by the British Council.

Ticketing information is available here on the Festival website.

Hope to see you there.… Read more

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Crime fiction, Noir fiction, Tartan Noir

Tagged , , , , , ,

The death of a bookshop: a tribute to Melbourne’s Kill City Books

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 26 Comments

KC 4

I love poking around in second-hand bookshops. The more disorganised and dishevelled, the better. I can’t remember the last time I found one with a curtained off section where they stashed the adult stuff, the pulp fiction and true crime, but those ones were best of all.

It’s always sad to hear about the closure of a second handbook shop and they’ve been closing with alarming frequency in Melbourne over the last few years.

The latest casualty is Flinders Books, which had operated out of the basement at 119 Swanston Street, for 18 years. Before that it had reportedly been a trading card shop, and going back even further, a rest and recreation area for military personnel after World War II.

Basement Books, located at 342 Flinders Street is, as far as I know, the last second-hand bookshop in the Melbourne CBD.

The reasons behind the closure are nothing new: changing book buying habits, including the rise of e-books, coupled with a massive rent increase, all of which, according to the owner, made the business impossible to sustain at its current location.

As if the end of a good second-hand bookstore is not sad enough, the passing of Flinders Books has a wider historical significance. For the last eight years of its existence it also hosted the remnants of Kill City Books, once Melbourne’s premier bookshop specialising in crime fiction and true crime.… Read more

→ 26 Comments

Posted in Australian crime fiction, Chester Himes, Crime Factory, Crime Factory Publications, Crime fiction, Forgotten Melbourne, James Ellroy

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Book review: Kuala Lumpur noir

Posted on July 22, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 7 Comments

KL NoirIf you need further proof there’s no better vehicle than crime fiction for shining a light into the crevices and cracks of society the powers in control don’t want you to see, check out a new anthology called KL Noir.

That’s KL as in Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia.

Kuala Lumper may not seem like the most obvious place to set an anthology of noir fiction. On the surface, at least, it has a reputation as an orderly, well behaved city.

But if this book is anything to go by, a lot is going on under the surface.

KL is a city crawling with horrendously exploited migrant workers and angry ghosts, a place where breakneck economic development and rampant consumerism has left many of its citizens with no other social outlet than wandering shopping malls, and which is governed by a highly authoritarian ruling party that has clung to power for over half a century.

How Asian writers interpret crime fiction in general, and noir narratives in particular, fascinates me. KL Noir is first of four volumes about the city’s dark side by independent Malay publishing company Buku Fixi. I didn’t like every story in the collection, par for the course for any anthology. But there are some great tales and, collectively, they’re a great insight into what noir means in this particular neck of the woods.… Read more

→ 7 Comments

Posted in Asian noir, Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from Malaysia, Noir fiction

Tagged , , ,

Book review: in Praise of James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss

Posted on July 11, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 7 Comments

The Last Good Kiss“When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside Sonoma California, drinking the heart out of a fine spring afternoon.”

I recently re-read James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss. It was maybe my third or fourth time, I’m not sure.

Whatever the case, I came away from the book thinking two things.

Firstly, it probably has the greatest opening line of any book I’ve ever read.

Second, it may very well be the best piece of private investigator fiction written. It’s certainly the best one I can remember reading, and I’ve read a lot. The story is a terrific piece of distilled hard-boiled noir, and Crumley is such a fine writer. I was determined to mark the most memorable passages but gave up by page 30. There were just too many of them.

The Last Good Kiss starts off with CW Sughrue being paid to search for an alcoholic, larger than life, Norman Mailer-type writer called Abraham Traheane. He tracks Traheane for weeks down endless stretches of black top and numerous dead end bars, almost entering a dream like state, before finally finding him. His thoughts upon locating his quarry are worth repeating in full.… Read more

→ 7 Comments

Posted in Book Reviews, Crime fiction, James Crumley

Tagged ,