Adrian McKinty, author of The Cold, Cold Ground

For a novelist who admits he was driven to hate books and reading while in school, Adrian McKinty has not done too badly.

The first book by the crime writer from Carrickfergus in Co Antrim, Dead I Well May Be, was picked by Booklist as one of the 10 best crime novels of 2004, and his 2010 offering, Fifty Grand, won him the Spinetingler Award in the rising star category.

The audio book of McKinty’s Falling Glass was even picked out by Audible.com as its best mystery or thriller of 2011, despite his publishers having initially shown little faith in the potential of the book.

Now with the release of his latest novel, The Cold, Cold Ground, McKinty is certainly showing that crime – or at least crime writing – really does pay.

The Cold, Cold Ground tells the story of a Catholic police officer who is trying to solve a murder case amidst the turbulence of the Troubles and the hunger strikes of 1980s Northern Ireland.

It is a story that McKinty, who lives in St Kilda in Melbourne with his family, says he always wanted to write but only recently found the courage to do so.

“For eight years I avoided talking about the Troubles in my books,” explains McKinty.

“I was warned that nobody would want to read a book about Northern Ireland during the Troubles, that it wouldn’t sell in the UK, America or Australia. So I wrote about any other topic that I could. I have a book set in Harlem and even Cuba – anywhere but Belfast.

“But I had this amazing, crazy childhood and I realised I had been a fool for listening to publishers who told me not to write about it. It is a book I have always wanted to write and with the feedback for it that I have gotten so far, I’m reasonably optimistic.”

Set in the street where the author himself grew up,  McKinty says it was one of the easiest books he has ever written.

“Usually I am wracking my brain trying to come up with material, but there was none of that with this one. When I sat down with my morning coffee at my laptop or typewriter, the story just flowed. When you are a child you build up some really strong images in your head, and I could remember everything from then like it was yesterday.

“Basically the whole book takes place on the street where I grew up, so I hope that the people who live on the street like the book because I tried to be fair to everyone, even if I disagreed with certain things,” he says.

But McKinty’s childhood memories not only formed the basis for his latest novel; they spurred on his love/hate relationship with books and reading.

“When I was in school in the 1980s we were forced to read Charles Dickens and other 19th century novelists, and I hated it,” he laughs.

“I thought the joy of reading had been killed for me. Then one day when I was in the library I saw a display of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, and it changed everything. I realised I loved the crime writing, I started reading Jim Thompson and James M. Cain, and by the time I decided to write my first novel I knew exactly what type of books I wanted to write.”

But McKinty is not the only Irish novelist who embraces the genre of crime fiction. The popularity of Irish crime writing has exploded in recent years, a phenomenon that McKinty can’t fully explain either.

“I have no idea why, but there has just been a tidal wave of Irish crime writing recently,” he says.

“If you go into a bookstore in Belfast there are just so many crime novels available compared to four or five years ago, it’s fantastic.”

Now McKinty is hoping that The Cold, Cold Ground will prove popular with the hoards of Irish people who have made the move to Oz, but what is it really like being an Irish crime writer in Australia?

“It was hard at first, but now that the economy is so bad back home, every third person I meet is from Donegal,” laughs McKinty.

“Australia is a great country to live in, I love St Kilda, it’s grungy, near the sea and full of characters. It has great cafes’ to sit in with a notebook or a laptop and start writing.

“The only downside to living here is the 19-hour flight to Ireland or London when I have to do a book reading,” he adds.

“I don’t know if too many Australian’s will be interested in reading the new book, but there are a lot of Irish people living out here now, and I hope that this book piques some new interest in my writing.”

:: Adrian McKinty picks his favourite books of 2011

I read 52 books this year which is a little bit above my normal average. I’ve posted my 10 favourites below. Not on this list are the new books by Dec Burke, Stu Neville, John McFetridge,Brian McGilloway, Gerard Brennan and Ken Bruen which I read in manuscript last year and which were are all absolutely brilliant. (If you’re not reading Irish crime fiction because you don’t read crime fiction, man, are you missing out on where the real talent in Irish writing is these days.)

McFetridge, although a Canadian, counts because his antecedents are from that apocalyptic hell hole known as Larne. Also not on my list are the audiobooks I listened to this year as you can very often get a good book ruined by a bad narrator or a mediocre book elevated by superb narration and its sometimes hard to figure out whats going on. (Maybe I should do a top 10 audiobook list?)

Ok, enough blather, here’s my top 10.

10. World War Z – Max Brooks. I’m not really into zombies but this book had its moments of fun and fright.

9. Hollywood – Charles Bukowksi. I’m not really into Bukowski either but boy is this novel hilarious. As good a satire of Hollywood as you’ll read anywhere and it’s all actually true.

8. The Defence of the Realm: The Authorised History of MI5 – Christopher Andrew. All you ever wanted to know about British spies in the twentieth century. Except for the stuff that’s been redacted. What’s been redacted? Well we don’t know because it’s been redacted.

7. The City and the City – China Mieville. Two cities in Eastern Europe share the same geographic area. A detective from one is trying to solve a murder that may have been committed in the other. It gets weirder.

6. Arguably – Christopher Hitchens. The polemicist and rabble rouser’s best collection of essays yet. Probably his last.

5. Master and Commander – Patrick O’Brian. This is the fourth time I’ve listened to this book and it’s still fantastic. (Ok, so I’m breaking my self imposed audiobook rule already but this is the exception that proves the rule). One of the reasons I hated the film of M&C was the fact that it entirely missed the point of the novel which is about friendship and loyalty in the aftermath of the great 1798 rebellion in Ireland. I like the audiobook narrated by Patrick Tull, others rave about David Case.

4. The Rest Is Noise – Alex Ross. A history of classical music in the twentieth century by the New Yorker’s music critic.

3. If Not Winter: Fragments of Sappho – Anne Carson. Carson translates all the bits of Sappho that have turned up over the centuries. Somehow the ellipses are as beautiful as the bits that have survived.

2. Conquest of the Useless – Werner Herzog. Herzog’s account of the making of Fitzcarraldo in the Peruvian jungle. It was a nightmare and he knew it was going to be a nightmare which makes the nightmare all the more interesting.

1. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet – David Mitchell. I think this might have appeared on my list from 2010 also as I read it right at the end of the year. Mitchell’s best book since his masterpiece, Cloud Atlas. The Dutch and the Japanese misunderstand each other in eighteenth century Nagasaki. There’s a love story, a naval battle and the greatest Go game in the history of literature.

Adrian McKinty’s The Cold, Cold Ground, published by Allen & Unwin, will be available in February 2012.
Adrian McKinty’s Books of 2011 is cross-posted, with permission, from his blog The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.