Thank You!

Many thanks to all the regular readers of this blog because at least partially thanks to your votes, my book, The Cold Cold Ground, has won the 2013 Spinetingler Award for best crime novel!...I'm really very touched. I put a lot of my heart and soul into that book. It was both harrowing and strangely fun journeying back to the 1981 of my imagination and reliving those childhood days in Victoria Estate in Carrickfergus. I don't find writing particularly...

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What I'm Listening To

I'm working - reasonably - hard on the next Sean Duffy novel and I thought you might like to know what I'm listening to on my down time. I remember talking to Irvine Welsh once about his writing process and he told me that the first thing he did on starting a new novel was to prepare a mix tape (he said tape but surely he must have meant CD) to play while he was writing. I couldn't possibly do that. The slightest thing distracts me and I use it as an excuse not to write. If a tap is dripping in a house three streets over I will stop for the day....

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Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth

Yesterday was St George's Day so I thought I'd trot out this post from last year......It's not very fair to review a play on the basis of reading it rather than seeing it performed but this was my only option since Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem has only run on the West End and Broadway and I don't know if it'll make it to Australia anytime soon. I've been hearing a lot about Jerusalem for a while  now so last week I finally thought that I would...

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A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again is a collection of essays by the late David Foster Wallace that includes several of his most famous works in the form. DFW was, in my opinion, a better essay writer than he was a novelist, but that's not as harsh a criticism as it sounds as I think DFW was one of the best American essayists of the twentieth century. In fiction DFW takes himself a little too seriously for my taste even when he's being humorous,...

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One Of My Favourite Noirs

One of my favourite noirs has sneaked its way onto youtube so if you havent seen it this is your chance before it gets deleted. The film begins at 1:33, my favourite bit begins at 58:10 and lasts for the next minute or so, an extraordinary scene where Barry Sonnenfeld's camerawork, Carter Burwell's score and Joel Coen's directing all blend seamlessly (I love the fact that the music stops as the engine stalls just to increase the tension)...The film is a slow burn classic but the existential ending is in a league by itself. And dont you love Dan...

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I Hear The Sirens

Sue Turnbull's review of I Hear The Sirens In The Street from last weekend's Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age. I pledge my undying love to any reviewer who actually gets my jokes!...I Hear The Sirens In The StreetCRIME FICTIONBy Adrian McKintySerpent's Tail,  $29.99According to Ian Rankin's blurb for I Hear the Sirens in the Street, this crime novel ''blew'' his ''doors off''. To which I might add, ''and it rattled my windows too''. Given...

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Where And When Does Game Of Thrones Take Place?

I've been reading reviews of Game of Thrones by newbies in the last few weeks that talk about the "medieval world" George RR Martin created for the books and while its true that Martin was heavily influenced by Tolkien, the age of chivalry and the Wars of the Roses actually Game of Thrones has a different provenance which sets the GOT universe not in the past but in the future. I shall explain. ...High fantasy in its present form was more or...

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Inferno by Dan Brown

(The new Dan Brown novel Inferno will be released on May 15. I was lucky enough to get a galley from Doubleday and remarkably chapter 1 of Inferno is called The Lost Squirrel and coincides exactly with the chapter I found online and released here on this very blog 2 years ago...Amazing, eh?)Chapter 1 The Lost SquirrelRobert Langdon woke from a dreamless sleep in his Cambridge apartment near Harvard University, America’s oldest and finest college...

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The Most Terrifying Film I've Ever Seen

We're always on the look out for films to watch as a family here at Casa McKinty and one good way of finding those films is to look at the IMDB list of top 100 family movies. We've gradually made our way through that list, but the elephant in the room is the film sitting there at the very top. No it's not Dumbo (all that talk of elephants threw you didn't it?) its Toy Story 2, a film I'm reluctant to show to the kids because I found it to be the...

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I Hear The Sirens: The First American Review

Booklist Advanced ReviewIssue: May 1, 2013I Hear the Sirens in the Street * (starred review)McKinty, Adrian (Author)May 2013. 318 p. Prometheus/Seventh Street, paperback, $15.95. (9781616147877). Prometheus/Seventh Street, e-book, (9781616147884).A headless torso found in a suitcase presents just the kind of case Detective Inspector Sean Duffy of the Royal Ulster Constabulary wants to pursue, even after he’s ordered to let it go. When the victim...

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