Critical Mick

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Dublin Noir
edited by Ken Bruin
Akashic Books, 2006

Noir: The Black Shtuff

Take nineteen hot crime writers. Feed 'em bad directions around a wrong corner of modern "Celtic Tiger" Ireland, then shove 'em into a shady dive bar where a suspiciously skinny Galway gurrier eyes everything they do. Give 'em each a double of Jamieson, a pint chaser, and a typewriter to batter like hell. The result: Dublin Noir.

This 2006 short story anthology kicks straight off with one of its highlights. Eoin Colfer, best known for the Artemis Fowler series of Young Adult novels, proves he can do the business for grown-up audiences as well. "Taking On P.J." traps two hilarious small-time crooks and the reader atop one of the dog-rough Ballymun towers. On the way up the stairs is PJ, the local boss's enforcer.

Humor, style, originality, action, plausibility, a kicker of a twist. "Taking on PJ" is a great, satisfying opener. I'll have to check out those books about Colfer's teenaged criminal mastermind, Artemis Fowl, to see if he works the same magic.

As with every short story collection, there are hits and misses in the tales that follow.

Jason Starr's "Lost in Dublin" tells the tale of a young New Yorker who runs off to the Irish capital intent on deciding once and for all whether she will dump or forgive her cheating, lying fiancé. An unexpected theft changes young Kathy's perspective. Emotional impact, personal growth, concise language and good characterization. Plus: "Lost in Dublin" reveals crime of the sort which tourists might actually encounter on the Dublin streets. There's truth (and thus value, a warning) to it.

That's a failing of other selections. As fun as Reed Farrel Coleman's "Portrait of the Killer as a Young Man" and James O. Born's "Tourist Trade" are, there's no reality to them. As I bitched and moaned about John Galvin's novel The Mercury Man: Ireland is not full of serial killers and they don't prey on tourists. Dublin crime has its own targets, motives and methods. With their hyper-psycho violence by unlikely characters in Hollywoodish situations, several stories in Dublin Noir just don't reflect the reality of the city.

Kudos go to Pat Mullan for depicting a Dublin where official corruption is constantly investigated in costly tribunals, and to Sarah Weinman for painting in her "Hen Night" story a Temple Bar full of bachelorette parties over from London. Weinman (check out her Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind blog- well worth a read) also takes time to feature one of the city's cultural attractions, the Irish-Jewish Museum in Portobello, alongside the usual dark corners and dead ends.

A true reflection of Dublin life: almost every story takes at least one journey into a pub. Some pubs are well evoked, like the dive bar in Jim Fusilli's "The Ghost of Rory Gallagher" and the trendy Harcourt Street nightclub in Craig McDonald's "Rope-A-Dope." Others less so. (Come on! The Ball Alley House is nowhere near the route of a City Centre pub crawl!) The well-known Guinness and Jamieson brands are consumed throughout. A few whiskey-and-red-lemonades and vodka-and-bitter-lemons would have reflected a more informative Irish drinking experience. Maybe some take-away tinnies of Beamish or two-litre bottles of cheap cider consumed down by the canal. Ah! The scene of many Dublin crimes- against good booze and good people both.

Others have their own drug of choice. Zelmont Raines, disgraced football player and narrator of Gary Phillips' "The Man for the Job" journeys to Ballymun in search of crack cocaine.

For its attitude alone, "The Man for the Job" became my favorite story in the collection.

Critical Mick says: Ken Bruen has done a deadly job of beating these nineteen dodgy chancers across the knees with tire irons until they coughed up nineteen wicked, enraged original stories. Though few are superstars of today's Irish crime fiction spree, Dublin Noir introduces hot talent and captures a shade of what Dublin's darker side is like.

Check out my newly-revised Irish Crime page! Whoo hoo!

Yo! This review and all content on the DFA Guide site are copyright 2007 Mick Halpin. All links to other sites and documents are copyright to whatever source wrote something cool enough for Mick to give it a referral. Try to claim them as your own work and bad karma will catch up with you, baby. Believe it.

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This Page Was Last Updated On 15 July, 2007.