[Entering the Otherworld - a photo from ‘Tourism in the Irish/Oirish Otherworld’ in the ‘Paid’ section of the newsletter].
We’re experiencing a mild winter here in New Zealand and although its cold (by New Zealand standards), listing around the high single digits, the days are long and the sun, on its own, is strong enough to heat our house for the best part of the day.
To get away from the office or to break the routine, I generally make a point of catching up with a friend for coffee and a yack, at least once or twice a week. For that reason, given the calm weather, when I picked up a visiting friend from the airport last week, I brought her to Scorch-O-Rama in Scorching Bay, a small cafe on the Wellington seafront.
Scorching Bay is a pretty beautiful spot, where you can just sit outside and admire the stretch of the harbour marking the entrance to Wellington harbour, musing on life as you watch the ferry passing in or out, moving to, or from, the South Island. This particular place had its heyday back around 2002 to 2012 when it was regularly packed with actors and other professionals working on the Lord of the Rings film trilogy (the Wingnut Films facility is only 10 minutes away) and of course the people wanting to see, or be seen with, them. It’s quietened down a lot since then. Nowadays, its relatively easy to get an outside seat – which are actually located on the seafront directly across the road from the café.
I was reflecting on all these film associations last week as we sat with our coffees because a flock of obese looking seagulls had taken up residence on the wooden fence right next to where the seats were located where they sat observing us with Hitchcockian menace. Every time someone left a nearby table – and the remnants of their breakfast – a cloud of seagulls would rear up and envelop it. I’ve never really seen anything like it and I’m not entirely sure if it was beautiful or scary, but it was certainly spectacular. This is a tiny snippet of the edge of the cloud.
In Production
I don’t have much to share on creative projects this month. Work between now and Christmas is going to be intense as I complete Fionn: The Betrayal but also commence work on at least three other projects - none of which I’m yet ready to talk about. That said, recent changes mean I can now concentrate on projects I’ve never previously had time or headspace to initiate. It’s interesting but, with all the various elements of plans, plots and projects whirring around me, I have the oddest sense of standing still in a field of magnetic flux, or the flow of a powerful river while the world flows around me. Its tiring, it stretches me creatively, but its invigorating and, hopefully, in the longer term, rewarding.
Two days ago, I also had an unexpected delivery with some large packages being manhandled up the front door stairs to by a DHL driver. This struggling courier was dropping off some equipment I’d ordered for one of the forementioned projects, but which wasn’t supposed to arrive for several weeks. The packages are currently sitting alone and forlorn in the hallway, deserted for the time being as I don’t have the time or headspace to deal with them yet.
To be honest, I’m also a bit hesitant to make a start at unsealing the plastic wrapping. I’m pretty sure that if I release that particular genie, my curiosity will drive me into investigating it further when I already have enough on my plate. At this stage, my best guess is that it’s going to take me two months to figure out how to work the new equipment, probably another two to play around to the point where I can create something that’s worth releasing.
In conclusion, therefore, a flurry of work in the office but the results of that work won’t be visible for another four - six months. There’ll be at least one book out over that period. Potentially, two. Hopefully I can reveal more as we slide closer to Christmas.
Liath Luachra: The Great Wild
For those of you with access to United Kingdom market Kindles, just be aware that ‘Liath Luachra: The Great Wild’ is currently available at half price. You can find it here: The Great Wild. (note : this is the UK Amazon only)
Given the rushed release before I returned home to Ireland, there haven’t been many reviews on Amazon but there are plenty on Goodreads (Here). My sincere thanks again to those of you who took the time to write those
Books Reviews
While I was back in Cork a few weeks ago, a minor accident meant I ended up bedbound for six days, a situation I wasn’t particularly happy with but not something I could really do anything about either.
To pass the time, I ended up carrying out some ‘research reading’ in the thriller genre. This isn’t an area I’ve ever really dipped into before, but given my intention to continue the Beara Trilogy next year, I wanted to see what the field was like and if there was anything I could learn.
My first learning was that this was a pretty damn populated field. Honestly! It looks as though every writer but me has produced several books in this area. As a result, I decided to limit my research to two of the more well-known authors (well, at least ‘well known’ to me, even if I’d never actually read any of their stuff).
The first two books I chose were by Lee Child (Jack Reacher: ‘The Killing Floor’ and ‘Tripwire’). The second two by Michael Connelly (Bosch: ‘The Concrete Blond’ and ‘The Last Coyote’). For a bit of variety, I also read a French thriller by Sophie Henaff called ‘The Awkward Squad’ that I’d heard about a few years ago and which I’d picked up by chance in a second-hand shop in Cork.
To be honest, apart from the second Reacher book (Tripwire), they were all pretty good and it’s easy to understand the authors’ popularity. Both Reacher and Bosch are polished pieces of writing, even if they’re completely different in style.
For me, the Reacher Series was probably the less interesting of the two, but that really comes down to personal taste – never a good measure of quality or value. I felt the Reacher plots were entertaining and the pace of the action was excellent, but I was disappointed by the villains (particularly in Tripwire) who were almost cartoonlike in their evilness. I also felt that the absence of character development was a weakness that would wear me down eventually. The character of ‘Reacher’ was ‘Rambo-esque Mary Poppins’ (violently perfect in every possible way) and, although entertaining, his Übermensch perfection means that he could do no wrong. I had the sense that if you read one book (and The Killing Floor is a pretty good place to start), the others would be pretty much the same. There’s nothing wrong with that of course. Meaningful character development in a series like that would take a lot more work (which means the books would also take longer to write). And to be fair, the Reacher Series does exactly what it’s meant to: it’s a well written entertainment that fits the bill when you just want to switch off.
If you’re looking for a more cerebral read, the ‘Bosch Series’ would probably be more to your liking. This is pure ‘police procedural’, with a great amount of detail involving the process of investigating a crime. This means there’s very little action in the Bosch books but, fortunately, the dryness of the procedural elements is nicely broken up with enough interdepartmental police and office politics to keep it human. The character of Bosch, the protagonist, is overshadowed to a large degree by the actual investigation but that also works well as, in a sense, he is the investigation. Emotionally, he’s incredibly stilted and uncompromisingly driven, but in the story that also explains why he’s so good at what he does.
For people who enjoy-based stories, the level of procedural detail in the Bosch books is likely to drive them barmy. That said, the two books I read worked well enough for me that I’m probably going to read some more.
The Awkward Squad was first published in 2015 and, following its release, there were a number of comparisons made with a series by fellow French female thriller author, Fred Vargas (and her amusing Adamsberg Series). Given that I enjoyed Vargas’ books so much recently (see one of the previous newsletters), I was keen to try it out.
Henaff is well known journalist and columnist with Cosmopolitan in France and, when I first started reading The Awkward Squad, I began to wonder whether this was simply some kind of vanity project cashing in on the success of the Adamsberg Series. Certainly, the similarities in terms of set up are evident. A squad of ‘difficult’, ‘eccentric’, or ‘crazed’ cops is being established – in this case to act as a kind of “elephant’s graveyard” for ‘problem cops’ who’ve messed up publicly or badly disgruntled the police hierarchy but who can’t be fired outright. Headed by the trigger-happy Commissaire Anne Capestan, there are little expectations of the new squad. Neither are there many opportunities for any actual police work apart from the prospect of clearing some ancient cases that have simply been discarded.
Although the squad is meant to house about forty people, only three actually turn up for work with Capestan (although a few more drip in over the subsequent weeks). These ‘losers’ consist of Capitaine Torrez (known as ‘Malchance’ due the bad luck that follows him and any investigation he forms part of), Commandant Lebreton, an officer from the French Internal Affairs (who’d once hounded Capestan herself), and Capitaine Rosiere who’s “no longer secret” writing career based on (and lampooning) her police experience made her a millionaire. Over the subsequent week, a few more officers turn up, including Capitaine Merlot, a happy if somewhat verbose drunkard, Lieutenant Evrard, a compulsive gambler, and Capitaine Orsini, who’s renowned in the service as a direct informant to the press on any investigation he forms part of.
Although humiliated by her new posting Capestan decides to make the best of it and initiates a review of the dusty files assigned to her, eventually focussing her team on two specific cases. One of these involves the murder of an elderly woman several years earlier, which is believed to be the result of an interrupted ‘break and entry’. The second relates to a bullet-riddled sailor whose body was found floating in the Seine more than twenty years earlier.
The initial set up of the new squad and the introduction of such a wide group of characters essentially means the first few chapters are slightly limited. You might first assume therefore, that this is simply a derivative supermarket brand of the Adamsberg Series, but then you come across nuggets like this:
A man was striding down the central pathway. Evard was on her guard. Nothing really marked him out from the crowd, other than the fact that he was a little more scruffy and pale than the others. And the fact that he was screaming “Wanker! Wanker! Wanker!'“ at the trees, the sky and the passers’-by. Yet another person that Paris had foresaken.
Evard felt a sudden envy for his unbridled freedom, for the freefall that comes when you cut the final cord, the last restraint.
Once the investigations gain pace, the book becomes far more interesting and its spotted here and there with some very funny set pieces. Overall, therefore, despite a slow start, it’s a funny and satisfying read.
Because this is really an ‘introductory’ book, I suspect subsequent books in the series, with more established characters, will fare far better. There is a second book (Stick Together) that I’ll be getting around to but, given this concentrated burst of police/detective reading, I think I’ll be heading back to historical action and adventure first.
The Soundtrack - What’s echoing through the Office
As I start to work more intensively from home, I’ve started listening to music again. For a long time, I’ve rarely listened to music of any kind as our ancient stereo system died several years ago and I couldn’t be bothered using Spotify (except when I cook). Now I’ve got a small new system in the office, and this is what I’ve been listening to over the last two weeks.
Souad Maasi
Souad Massi, an Algerian Berber (pre-Arab inhabitant of North Africa) musician from Algiers, initially came to fame during the 1990s as the sole female member of Algerian rock group ‘Atakor’. Atakor tended to play politically charged music targeting political corruption and religious fundamentalism in Algeria and other Arab countries which, unfortunately led to Maasi being targeted herself. After a series of death threats, she upped sticks to Paris where she began a solo career.
Although she sings in several languages (mostly Arabic and French, but also in English), Massi’s quiet, poetic style is very accessible to western audiences and that’s probably the reason she’s so successful in Europe. I first came across her in 2003 following the release of her album ‘Deb’ (Heartbroken) which was a far more personal (i.e. not political) album than anything she’d done before. When I left France, her subsequent albums didn’t really interest me and I pretty much lost track of her until the release of ‘Sequanna’ in 2022.
Musical taste is completely personal of course but if you’re into beautifully arranged emotive singing, I’d highly recommend trying ‘Dessine Moi un pays (Draw Me a Country), the first track from the album. I’ve attached a You Tube link below but given the annoying ads and how unsatisfying the medium of video is for listening to music, you might be better off finding it on Spotify instead.
The End
That’s all I’ve got for August. The ‘paid’ section of the newsletter has an article on Tourism Mythology this month so I hope those who access it, enjoy it.
Until next month
Slán go fóill!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Irish Imbas’s Substack to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.