John Connolly

No Alibis : An Interview with David Torrans

No Alibis

 

 by Annika Breinig (with thanks to Portia Ellis-Woods and Dominique Jeannerod)

 55536_1_no-alibis-bookstore

No Alibis : a  Bookshop to die for (83, Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BTL7 1 JL) Continue reading

Names & Places of Irish Noir

WordItOut-word-cloud-Irish Noir

This is a word cloud story of Irish Noir. It is based on a corpus of 280 novels published between 1994 and 2015. The story told by the data represented here details a population of authors, ordered by the respective size of their outputs.  This word cloud indicates  the most productive authors; it suggests that the label “Irish Noir” designates a relatively small, but significant group of writers.

The next representation is based on these authors’ s places of birth.

pob

In contrast to the previous one, and to where the action of Irish noir series are set (Jack Taylor’s Galway, Ben Devlin’s Strabane-Lifford Borderlands, Sean Duffy’s Carrickfergus, Ed Loy’s Dublin…), the third cloud here reflects  the place of publication of their books. It shows that Irish Noir is actually made in Britain. And to a lesser extent in America. But it also indicates an emergence, of a number of publication places in Ireland : in Dublin, but as well in county Kerry, with Dingle as the headquarters  of a publishing house actively engaged in  the Irish noir phenomenon (Brandon).

publi

Irish Noir in 75 Dates

Bruen index

Banville, Vincent Death by design Wolfhound Press 1994
McEldowney, Eugene  A Kind of Homecoming   Heinemann 1994
McNamee, Eoin Resurrection Man Picador 1994
Banville, Vincent Death the Pale Rider   Poolbeg 1995
Bateman, Colin Divorcing Jack  Harper Collins 1995  Betty Trask Prize

There are countless examples of Irish Crime Fiction troughout the 20th Century. Admittedly, in some cases the links between  a given  Crime  author and Ireland might be missed, or are by now forgotten. The prolific George A. Birmingham, for example  (James Owen Hannay, 1865 – 1950) was a Belfast born Church of Ireland clergyman. Some Irish authors rank amongst the most celebrated representatives of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, like the Dublin born Freeman Wills Crofts (1879-1957). Nicholas Blake (Cecil Day-Lewis, 1904-1972) is another famous Ireland born  author of Britsh Mystery novels.The “noir” genre however starts in Ireland much later. For the most part it only began 20 years ago. Continue reading