For your own sake, Peter, stop stealing my scripts

Fiction writer GARBHAN DOWNEY offers some belated advice to the First Family

If Peter and Iris Robinson have indeed been reading my novels, I must strongly appeal to them to stop immediately.

I watched Thursday night’s Spotlight programme with all the unfolding horror of a puppet-master whose charges have sprung to life and are racing towards a very messy finale.

So I am pleading with them now, NOT to buy my new book, out next month, as it could damage their lives irreversibly.

Let me explain.

Since 2004, I have published five black comedies set in the world of Irish politics, and the Robinsons, it seems, have now adopted all of them as life-coaching manuals.

Let’s start with Running Mates (2007), which centres on a crooked race for the Irish presidency. In it, the right-wing candidate is a lifelong advocate of family values to such an extent that he employs a perfectly lovely psychiatrist whose speciality is “curing” homosexuals.

My fictional doctor’s techniques include giving his “patients” copies of Readers’ Wives and instructing them to pretend they are “married” to some of the prettier ladies. I don’t know what methods Iris’s friend used...

Okay, this first hit could be a coincidence, I’ll grant you. But let’s go back a bit. In Off Broadway (2005), a Northern political leader is cuckolded by his glamorous wife. In my book, however, the hero is forced to forgive his wife as she knows where his bodies are buried - in his case literally. But luckily for Harry the Hurler, the media are too afraid of him to publish a word – and even collude in a cover-up.

Again, I accept, this could be a fluke. But by 2008, strange things are starting to happen, and my characters really seem to be morphing out of the pages. Yours Confidentially: Letters of a would-be MP tells the story of a planning scam, and at one stage we have a sitting Northern Ireland MP being forced to pay back cheques to developers. Maybe this happens all the time, I don’t know. But I’m starting to feel a little uneasy.

Then last year, in the novel War of the Blue Roses, I invented a totally improbable tryst between a teenager and a sixty-something hillbilly politician. It was so far off the scale, I nearly removed it from the book as I wasn’t sure readers would believe it.

But on Thursday night, up pops young Kirk and nearly blows my socks off. And people say life never imitates art.

There is some hope, however. During the Great Not Speaking Crisis of 2004, I produced Private Diary of a Suspended MLA, which predicted an eventual partnership between the DUP and Sinn Fein. So, I now feel fully entitled to claim the credit for Peter’s thawing towards Martin.

There is, however, always a moral balance to my books. Comedy by its very nature is concerned with righting wrongs and the judicial application of poetic justice. And I personally subscribe to Carl Hiaasen’s dictum that the nastier the villain, the more horrible his or her demise must be.

In my next book, for example, The American Envoy, the femme fatale, a real sun bunny winds up posted to Alaska for five years. And the lead villain is shot in the ass and forced to carry around a rubber toilet ring for all eternity. Others prove even less fortunate...

But that’s too much already. I’m giving the script away again.

The Robinsons really would need to stop reading now.

The American Envoy will be published by Guildhall Press in February 2010 and launched at the Dublin Book Festival.

Article appears on CSNI courtesy of the Irish News.

War of the Blue Roses - Coming Soon!

Since reading Yours Confidentially last year, I've been eagerly anticipating the next Garbhan Downey novel. Well, I'm currently reading an ARC of War of the Blue Roses. I'm on chapter 5 at the minute, and this could well be his finest work to date.

While I work my way through the book and procrastinate for the required amount of time before reviewing it, why don't you guys feast your eyes on this fantastic John McCloskey cover? McCloskey, besides being a double Celtic Film Festival gold torc-winner for animation is also the former guitarist with Derry punk legends Bam Bam and the Calling. And when you're done gawking at that, have a read through the Guildhall Press press release.

COMING SOON...COMING SOON...COMING SOON

‘War of the Blue Roses’

by Garbhan Downey


Who knew this flower-growing business could be so dangerous?

Guildhall Press are delighted to announce the release next month of ‘War of the Blue Roses’, the riotous new novel from Garbhan Downey.

‘War of the Blue Roses’ – the much-anticipated sequel to Downey’s widely-acclaimed comedy-thriller ‘Running Mates’ (2007) – is a rollicking black comedy set in the world of international politics.

In the book, a US sponsored gardening competition in the little country village of Mountrose ends up throwing three governments into turmoil when it sparks a worldwide race to grow the world’s first blue rose. The Irish premier is forced to team up with semi-reformed gangsters to stop British and American politicians shanghaiing the Mountrose Prize and walking off with a billion-dollar patent. Bugging, burglary, sabotage, murder and sexual deceit – it’s all part of the rose-growing business. And the bad guys are even worse…

‘Roses’ is Downey’s fifth novel and is set to enhance his reputation as a top-class writer. His last book, ‘Yours Confidentially: Letters of a would-be MP’, was listed by a number of reviewers on their ‘Book of the Year’ lists – and was one of the Philadelphia Inquirer’s seven International Crime Fiction ‘must-reads’ of 2008. Downey’s debut novel, ‘Private Diary of a Suspended MLA’, was described in the Sunday Times as “the best Northern Ireland political novel of the century”.

The cover of ‘Roses’ is designed by the award-winning animator John McCloskey, whose film ‘Crumblegiant’ was nominated for a BAFTA in 2008.

For further information about the author and details of his books, please visit: www.ghpress.com or www.garbhandowney.com

I'm a Crime Writer!

Yes indeedy, folks. You heard it here first. The next Northern Irish crime writer will be... me! (Unless some other bugger I haven't heard about gets in there first.)

The most excellent people at Guildhall Press will be publishing my West Belfast crime novel, Piranhas, some time before Christmas 2008.

Holy crap!

Guildhall also published Yours Confidentially by Garbhán Downey. I'm in pretty damn good company.

You couldn’t make it up - Garbhan Downey Guest Blog

Yours Confidentially author GARBHAN DOWNEY bemoans the difficulties of writing satire in a crazier world...

I have to say I was completely taken aback this week by Iris Robinson’s admission that she had a “very lovely psychiatrist” in her offices who helps “turn around” homosexuals.

It an illustration of why it is becoming so damned hard to write satire in Ireland.

And no, I’m not getting up on my high heels here at the DUP’s Christian fundamentalism – we know exactly what we’re getting when we (or some of us at least) vote them in.

Rather, I am staggered that Mrs Robinson’s actions are such a classic case of life imitating art.

You see, three years ago, I wrote a novel Running Mates, a comic-thriller set against a cooked race for the Irish presidency. And in it, I dreamed up a trenchant rightwing contender, whose sidekick was a Jesuit psychiatrist with a speciality in, you’ve guessed it, “curing” homosexuals.

In creating the character of Monsignor George Behan – who became known to all as Bend ’Em Back Behan – I sketched the most awful, outlandish fascist I could possibly imagine, before nudging him a few notches further into the realms of the improbable.

Iris, I fear, however, has now knocked me right off the chart.

For the record ‘Benders’, as I fondly refer to him, was the president of Saving Ireland from Sodomy. In one scene, he tells one client: “You’re no deviant. I can tell by the cut of you, you’re no nancy-boy. You don’t gel your hair, you bite your nails and your tie and socks don’t match your suit. You’re not a homo, this is just a minor wiring problem and I’m the electrician who’s going to fix it. From my experience, only about one percent of the men I meet are genuine, un-savable poofters.”

As a first step in curing the client, Benders then gives him a copy of a magazine called Readers Wives and orders him to pick out one of the prettier ladies and pretend that he’s married to her.

Can I stress, stress and re-stress, that my intentions here were to lampoon and excoriate the excesses of the far right. To shame them for their intolerance and to mock them for their self-righteousness. Not give them ideas.

But every time you dream up something ridiculous about Irish politics, something so satirical that it could never ever happen, you pick up a newspaper to find some senior minister has just gone and knocked your efforts into a tin hat. Martin McGuinness writes goodbye poems for Ian Paisley, Hillary Clinton refuses to withdraw her nomination on the grounds that Obama could still get shot, and a Tory MEP indignantly stands over his decision to pay his wife three-quarters of a million pounds out of the public purse.

In my world, at least, Bend Em Back Behan gets just desserts, and his candidate ends up well, let just say, there’s some poetic irony involved. And that’s the real beauty of fiction – and why I prefer it a thousand times to the real world. You can at least pretend there’s some sort of karmic order there – and, if you don’t like the characters and you think it’s time they left the scene, you can mete out your own justice.

Garbhan Downey

Mr Downey, from all of us here at CSNI, thank you, thank you, thank you. Although this article puts us to shame in style, content and wit, we are honoured to host this exclusive opinion piece.

An Interview - Garbhán Downey

Garbhán Downey has worked as a journalist, broadcaster, newspaper editor and literary editor. He lives in Derry with his wife Una, and children Fiachra and Bronagh. His fourth novel, the comedy-thriller Yours Confidentially: Letters of a would-be MP, has just been published by Guildhall Press.

Q1. What are you writing at the minute?

Lots - a historical biography, two novels (at advanced draft stage), two plays about smuggling, and I’ve just been asked to edit a troubles-related book.

Q2. Can you give us an idea of Garbhán Downey’s typical up-to-the-armpits-in-ideas-and-time writing day?

Every weekday, I try to spend between nine and six in the study – and while it doesn’t always work out that way, I’m pretty disciplined. When I was in full-time journalism, I worked long weeks and late hours that kept me away from my wife and young children. Happily, I copped myself on and remembered that no-one ever looked back on their deathbed and wished they’d spent more time in the office.

Q3. What do you do when you’re not writing?

Ferry youngsters to soccer, Gaelic, swimming and Irish dancing. Sky Sports also features occasionally, though less and less since the weans learned how to use the remote control.

Q4. Any advice for a greenhorn trying to break into the crime fiction scene?

Stick at it and the breaks will come. Oh – and be lucky!

Q5. Which crime writer(s) have impressed you this year?

Chris Brookmyre, Carl Hiassen, Colin Bateman and Brian McGilloway.

Q6. What are you reading right now?

Nell McCafferty’s autobiography, Penance for Jerry Kennedy by Boston crime great George Higgins, Deterring Democracy by Noam Chomsky, and The Cat in the Hat (nightly) by Dr Seuss.

Q7. Plans for the future?

Carry on chopping wood and carrying water.

Q8. With regards to your writing career to date, would you do anything differently?

No. Of course, I’ve made mistakes - you have to. But the great part is learning from them - that way you never get the same slap in the mouth twice.

For more information on Downey’s books, visit www.garbhandowney.com

Thank you, Garbhán Downey!

A Wee Review - Yours Confidentially by Garbhán Downey

Back in 2004 I read a Northern Irish political comedy titled Private Diary of a Suspended MLA, which told the story of an independent politician, Shay Gallagher, during the suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Even though I was mostly brain-dead from a lack of sleep (my little girl Mya had just arrived), and it took me weeks to read the relatively slim tome, it always stuck in my mind as a book I should reread in a few years. Since then Garbhán Downey has released pretty much a book a year and I still haven’t reread it; though I will, if only to remind myself how insane the NI trip to a devolved government has been. However, 2008 sees the return of Shay Gallagher in Yours Confidentially, and I’m telling you right now, it’s the funniest book I’ve read this year. And I read a lot.

Yours Confidentially is the tale of North Derry assemblyman, Shay Gallagher’s, campaign to win a seat in the House of Commons. Success will give him a real voice among the big boys and lend him more weight to look after his constituency. Better expenses too. When his chief rival, Frank “Bent” Bennett suddenly drops out of the race, Shay’s moderate chance becomes a certainty, and then the trouble begins. Tommy has broken one of his agent’s most important rules. Never put anything down on paper. Never. But Shay argued it was safer to stick to paper and ink than computers. So Tommy bought him the most powerful shredder on the market to accommodate his argument. The Disintegrate 2000! But Shay is too sentimental, and he keeps all the letters from his fiancée Sue McEwan, a one-time political rival. Add to this the devious nature of the ex-loyalist gangster turned “legitimate” businessman, Victor “Switchblade Vic” McLaughlin with his ambition to own a pet MP and Shay’s in way over his head.

The subtitle, Letters of a would-be MP, is of the Ronseal school of thought. “It does exactly what it says on the tin.” The novel is in the form of a collection of letters, memos, emails and newspaper clippings. Each chapter has a paragraph or two of narration from Shay Gallagher’s agent, Tommy “Bowtie” McGinlay, but other than that Downey has restricted himself to a strict form and created a real challenge. Somehow, he manages to tell a tale with a verve and effortless style that knocked my socks off. I can’t believe how much story he fits in to a chronological collection of realistic correspondence. Sex, intrigue, violence, suspense... it’s all there. I think a big factor in Downey’s success is the trust he lends his audience to read between the lines and the letters. We’re not spoon-fed, and we’re certainly not patronised, although NI politics is a confusing subject, even for the folk that live here.

But I do think the novel could be enjoyed beyond this little province and I’d love to know how easy it reads in England, America or anywhere. Thankfully, Guildhall Press are an ambitious publishing house, and with enough marketing I don’t see why Yours Confidentially wouldn’t make its way overseas.

A glossary of terms wouldn’t hurt though. In fact, I might just compile an unofficial glossary myself in the coming days and post it here for those of you with the good sense to listen to me when I say, BUY THIS BOOK. If nothing else, it gives a pretty accurate introduction into the world of NI politics. Then you can tackle my cousin’s academic text -- Political Leadership and the Northern Ireland Peace Process by Cathy Gormley-Heenan -- to get further insight into the politicians who make unofficial cameos throughout the book.

So, Yours Confidentially is a laugh-out-loud-funny, fast-paced story and an entertaining education in the climate of Northern Ireland’s politics as at April 2008. A brilliant way to mark the tenth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.