Tag Archives: Adrian Mckinty

Mid-year reading report: The Thief, St Kilda Blues, Hanging Devils, In the Morning I’ll Be Gone

Posted on June 30, 2014 by Andrew Nette| 4 Comments

Hanging-Devils-Jacket1My reading has been dominated of late by the need to get through a lot of pulp books and material I need to be across for several upcoming literary festival appearances (all of which I’ll also be discussing here in the coming weeks). Between all this, however, I have managed to get through a few books purely for pleasures and I thought it was about time I shared my thoughts on these.

First up is He Jiahong’s Hanging Devils: Hong Jun Investigates. I lamented on this site some time ago about the seeming absence of genuine contemporary crime fiction set in China, written by someone living there. Well, Hanging Devils is just that. According to the back cover blurb, the author is one of China’s foremost authorities on criminal justice, a professor of law at People’s University of Beijing and the author of several best selling crime novels including four featuring the character of Hong Ju.

Hanging Devils (also the slang term given to overhanging tree branches that can fall without warning, potential killing anyone unfortunate to be underneath them) is set in the mid-nineties.… Read more

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Posted in Adrian McKinty, Australian crime fiction, Book Reviews, Crime fiction, Crime fiction and film from China, Crime fiction and film from Japan

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My year in books: Angela Savage

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 15 Comments

Next up on the ‘my year in books’ series running on this site over December, is crime writer (and my long time partner) Angela Savage.

Angela is the author of three highly acclaimed crime novels based in Thailand and featuring the Australian PI Jayne Keeney. The most recent of these books, The Dying Beach was published in 2013 and is available here.

She’s also got a great website, or “piece of author real estate”, as I’ve heard these things referred to by book marketing people. You can find it here.

Welcome Angela

While Andrew specified that my top five reads for 2013 didn’t have to be crime, I figured crime picks would appeal to regular readers of Pulpcurry. I read a lot of crime in 2013—some 40 books as of early December—but I didn’t realise just how many were recent releases until I sat down to compose this list. The books that made the cut ultimately combine memorable plots and characters with great writing.

After the Darkness, Honey Brown

I read three of Honey Brown’s tense, atmospheric and erotic thrillers in 2013. Difficult as it is to pick a favourite, After the Darkness just pips her debut Red Queen and this year’s Dark Horse to make this list because it is one of the few genuinely scary books I’ve ever read.… Read more

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Posted in Adrian McKinty, Angela Savage, Australian crime fiction, Don Winslow, Noir fiction

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Book review: I Hear the Sirens in the Streets

Posted on May 26, 2013 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

i-hear-the-sirens-in-the-streetFor a writer who once decried the notion of book series as a tired formula, Adrian McKinty is remarkably good at them. I Hear the Sirens in the Street is the second in a series of three books set during the height of Ireland’s civil war in the seventies and eighties and featuring Detective Sergeant Sean Duffy.

Just to recap, Duffy is a Catholic in a Protestant dominated police force in a Protestant dominated town. He’s intelligent, has a nose for trouble and a determination not to back down in the face of threats from higher up in the police, or anywhere else for that matter. He also has good taste in music and, as the book opens, a deteriorating love life. In other words, he’s a well-rounded character in a hellish situation.

I Hear the Sirens in the Street kicks off the discovery of a body in a suitcase in an abandoned factory. Well, not exactly a body, the torso with the other bits sawn off. It belonged to an American citizen, a former US Marine during WWII. The American was poisoned with a very rare flower, frozen, and then cut up. Looking into the murder, it’s not long before Duffy is rubbing up against bent paramilitaries, an ambitious American carmaker and officials higher up in the police who just want to forget the whole thing.… Read more

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Posted in Adrian McKinty, Book Reviews, Neo Noir

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Orders open for LEE, a fiction anthology inspired by Lee Marvin

Posted on February 28, 2013 by Andrew Nette| Leave a comment

Lee-Marvin fishing

A heads up that you can now order LEE, Crime Factory’s anthology inspired by iconic American actor Lee Marvin, from our the site.

There’s been a bit of buzz around the traps about LEE and at the risk of sounding immodest, it’s all justified. Seventeen stories ranging from gonzo to literary noir, penned by some of the hottest crime writers around. Here’s what others are saying:

“This collection of short fiction puts legendary actor Lee Marvin smack dab in the center of the action where he belongs.”
Dwayne Epstein, author of Lee Marvin: Point Blank

“This collection delivers. The writing is pungent, sly and muscular, dark and comic, and all of it has a tremendous energy. A love of film and love of noir is evident in every story. This does Lee proud.”
Christos Tsiolkas, author of The Slap and Dead Europe

I’m excited to say I’ve also got a story in the anthology. I won’t give too much away about it, except to say it titled ‘Gone Fishing’, hence the theme of the photo above.

If you want a sneak peak of LEE, ManArchy is running a excerpt from Irish crime writer Adrian McKinty’s contribution to the anthology, ‘Hospital Ship’, which you can find here.

And if too much Lee Marvin is not nearly enough, you might light to check out my review for ManAnarcy of the recently released Marvin bio by Dwayne Epstein, Lee Marvin Point Blank.… Read more

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Posted in Adrian McKinty, Crime Factory, Crime Factory Publications, Lee Marvin

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LEE, an anthology of fiction inspired by Lee Marvin

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Andrew Nette| 3 Comments

LEE cover-I am a HUGE Lee Marvin fan.

Survivor of the carnage of World War Two, drinker, larger than life character, enduring icon of masculine cinema, the star of some of  my favourite films, including The Big Heat, The Killers, Point Blank, Prime Cut and The Dirty Dozen. The man who, in the words of his most recent biographer, “cemented the most purposeful and consistent portrayal of man’s violent and primal inner demons in the history of modern American cinema”.

Well over a year ago myself and fellow Marvin fanatic and Crime Factory editor in chief Cameron Ashley, were sitting in a bar drunkenly bullshitting about future projects, when we stumbled across the idea of doing an anthology of stories inspired by the life of one of our favourite movie stars.

The final product of that conversation, LEE, will be unleashed onto the world in a few weeks time. In the meantime, I thought readers might get a blast out of feasting their eyes on the cover above.

While putting together the book was not without its challenges, finding fellow crime writers who shared our passion for Marvin and who where prepared to put pen to paper to celebrate him and his movies, was not one of them. … Read more

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Posted in Adrian McKinty, Crime Factory, Crime Factory Publications, Lee Marvin, Roger Smith

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