Critical Mick

Reviews Free of Rules.

Reviews by the Clown that All Other Critics Want to Strangle with a Black Turtleneck

Still Rocking

Paul Charles, author of Family Life, sets Mick straight on the music industry, on why he created the Inspector Starrett series based in Ireland when he had a perfectly well-respected DI Christy Kennedy one going in London, on writing music vs. fiction, on the favorite three lines he has ever written and on a detail he almost used in his latest novel. An unruly email interview, September 2009.

Critical Mick: Most crime writers think they know the nature of evil, but you have actual experience with the record industry! Yikes.

Paul Charles: You know, with any scene that produces a lot of money you've always find a queue of people looking for a short cut and I've met a few such people, not too many, in my day. Usually a) they are the people who work for the owner/boss and b) they dress in black. Go figure.

CM: I used to share a house with a former musician. Once after a gig, the club owner only threw half the money across the desk. "Hey!" my buddy protested. Out from a different drawer the owner pulled a .38. BANG, it smacked down on the desk. Aidan grabbed the cash and ran before it made a louder bang.

CM, con't: Go on, tell us your own stories about where the world of music and crime met.

Critical Mick's review of Paul Charles's Family Life

PC: You know I'd love to but I'm collecting all those stories for another factual book. Kind of like [Paul Charles' non-fiction book] Playing Live but not so much of a guide or, 'how to succeed' book. CM: So that's the kind of danger that young guitar heroes must face on their own? PC: There's certainly a few tales in Playing Live but mostly you know musicians pass this kind of information on to each other. I remember when Tanita Tikaram was starting and she'd support people like Jonathan Richmond, John Martin and Warren Zevon they'd pass on little tips to her. Simple things like, always get paid before you go on stage! CM: Prompt: the glitter rock 70's were drug-crazed, mad days. True, or is that just hype that sells books, movies, and advertizing time during documentaries? PC: Sadly it's true; lots of causalities. CM: In that other career (hey, Inspector Starrett has had three) you've worked with Tom Waits, Elvis Costello and Van the Man. Some rock gossip, please…..

PC: It's not really stuff you'd want to hear. Tom Waits is as great a man as you're ever going to meet on this earth. Van Morrison is one of the most professional artists on the circuit. Jackson Browne, the man you see on the stage and hear in the songs is exactly the same man you'll meet off stage, warm, caring, generous. Elvis Costello is one of the hardest artists to get off the stage. His roadies used to have sweepstakes and bet on what time he was going to come off stage. He'd certainly give Ken Dodd a run for his money.

CM: Nanci Griffiths released an album The Last of the True Believers. Your Beatles novel is First of the True Believers. Is there a story there (other than that of the fictitious Theo Hennessy?)

PC: I always figured that the last of the true believers must be quite a sad character. Theo, though, from the beginning was more of an up chap; he'd a lot of energy. He was very keen, loved the music of the Beatles even though George Harrison didn't ask him to join the band when they were in the process of replacing Pete Best. Theo Hennessy was in Liverpool and he was a part of the Beatles scene from the beginning, but more importantly he was there for the entire trip and he knew why the Beatles were as successful as they were. But I'll happily admit that without Nanci's The Last of The True Believers I wouldn't have had my title.

CM: OK, your turn to make a plug. Who are you listening to these days? What's the last album you've actually bought rather than been given or downloaded for free?

PC: Okay the last album(s) I bought was the Beatles remastered (stereo) set. I was a bit cynical about all the fuss in advance to be honest. I have every single thing they've ever done, in every version, so did I really need to get it again. But I can tell you the difference in sound is like the difference between day and night. It really is like Paul McCartney recent said (about listening to the remastered versions), "It's like being in the room with the Beatles."

PC, con't: And then I also bought Lisa Hannigan's Sea Sew. This is truly a wonderful, beautiful, adventurous, imaginative, inventive, infectious album. Songs like "I Don't Know," is really a masterclass in the art of song-writing. Lyrically it's got a lot of the charm of the lyrics on the Undertones first couple of albums. Like the Undertones it's a lyric you kick yourself for not thinking of first.

Editorial Note: And she's a hottie, too.

CM: The never-ending argument: music or the beautiful sound of silence when you are writing your fiction? Observations and examples from your own expert opinion, please….

PC: I love to have music. Mostly. It inspires me. The perfect music can lead a scene for me. Sometimes though the scene demands silence so for me I suppose it's the balance that works.

CM: Writing songs and writing novels: does the energy come from the same place? Does it come out the same way?

PC: I tend to think so. Sometimes when I'm writing and I feel there is a scene there but I have to work furiously to get it down, to pull it through if you wish, knowing that if I don't do so in the moment there is a good chance I will lose if forever. I know some songs come the same way.

CM: What are the three favourite lines that you have written (lyric or prose, both).

PC: (Always) the last three. Today's last three were:

CM: Musicians who have written novels: Nick Cave has been getting a lot of press lately for The Death of Bunny Munro, though I've heard his writing recently described as a bad cover of Flannery O'Connor. The extract I read of Primus frontman Les Claypool's novel, South of the Pumphouse, wasn't a good advertisement for either his full novel or for acid. Leonard Cohen's Beautiful Losers has aged poorly. Midnight: A Gangster Love Story by Sister Souljah… 62 one-star reviews on Amazon. Has anybody excelled in both disciplines?

PC: I think Ry Cooder's collection LA Stories works very well as a book. I loved Dylan's Chronicles Vol 1. I think they both managed, very successfully, to develop another voice.

CM: Alright, now that we've come back to the topic of writing: why crime?

PC: Because for me, as both a writer and a reader, it contains the basic main three ingredients required for turning the page: to discover who did it, how the devil they did it and why they did it.

CM: The heavyweights of the English mystery scene get an explicit defence early on in Family Life: Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Colin Dexter. Your inspiration?

PC: Most certainly Colin Dexter as a writer and yes Agatha Christie and Arthur Conan Doyle for taking the trouble to come up with incredible plots.

CM: "Tell me, Starrett, did you ever notice that when Irish people move across the water they always say they're in London if they're living in London, but if they're living anywhere else- Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Portsmouth or wherever- they always say they're in England?" You really dig ol' Camden town.

PC: Yes I love Camden Town. There's a great spirit and energy here and as I often say, as a writer, location wise, no invention is required. The streets are vibrant and inspiring and the underbelly sometimes swells up so much it becomes visible overground.

CM: How does Camden stack up against Ramelton? What does London have that County Donegal does not? What can be found on the banks of Lough Swilly that can't on the Thames?

PC: It's much easier to pick up on the characters in Donegal.

PC: There's a lot more energy from the buzz of the streets in Camden Town.

CM: Are you just saying that to keep your missus happy?

PC: Nagh, it's the contrast we both share a love for.

CM: OK then, how does Inspector Starrett rank against Camden-based series character DI Christy Kennedy?

PC: You'd have to tell me.

CM: What's a clue that Kennedy would spot but Starrett would miss? And vice-versa?

PC: Starrett would be better at reading people. He instinctively knows when people are lying. It might have something to do with the fact that he's the only son of a seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. But he doesn't like to dwell on the special powers issue, feeling that's the sure way to blow it.

PC: Kennedy's drug is the process he goes through in discovering the solution to the puzzle of the crime.

CM: Why start a series based in Ireland when you had a perfectly well respected one going in London? Someone cynical and malicious (a former record studio exec, perhaps) might snarl that Ken Bruen, Declan Hughes, Brian McGilloway, Tana French and the whole home-grown gang have gotten a hell of a bandwagon rolling.

PC: They have and they do but I was always looking for a Starrett type of book to read. So much so in fact that I was always trying to coax my mate John Connolly to write a series set in Ireland. He couldn't be persuaded so I had to do my own. I spent a lot of time in Donegal and Ramelton. I love it there and, as you say below, I'd a ready made character waiting in the wings.

CM: Garda Inspector Starrett first appeared in the sixth Christy Kennedy book, I've Heard The Banshee Sing. Had you always kept him in mind, gradually seeing him grow into a figure who could headline on his own? (John Connolly's The Reapers spun off minor series characters Louis and Angel, for instance….)

PC: I liked Starrett a lot when he appeared in I've Heard The Banshee Sing, he came along fully formed and I enjoyed the character and used him in a short story I did for Bloomsbury. They invited a bunch of writers to base a short story around the Bruce Springsteen lyric, Meeting Across The River. That was a very enjoyable experience thanks many to Starrett and the location so The Dust of Death (first Starrett novel) came from that.

Editorial Note: That anthology has some fantastic talent: CJ Box, David Corbett, and eighteen others. I recently enjoyed the selection "Last Call" by Eddie Muller as a podcast on Seth Harwood's CrimeWAV. Download the .mp3 and meet these thugs yourself!

CM: Do I understand correctly that there are to be three- just three- Starrett books? The Dust of Death, Family Life, and IS#3 will form a kind of a story arc?

PC: Well I had the idea for the three in that Starrett's back-story would come out over the first three books. The third is to be called Hello Darkness My Old Friend., which I'll get stuck into next year. I'll discover where I am during the writing process of Hello Darkness My Old Friend.

CM: A Simon and Garfunkle reference! I was gobsmacked to see your reference to Dow Mossman on page 31 of Family Life. Where did you come across The Stones of Summer-! My folks have kept a copy on their bookcase for decades. My Dad knew him, you see. I'd no notion that anyone else even remembered it.

PC: A few years ago when I was travelling in America I saw an amazing documentary by Mark Moskowitz called Stone Reader, which was about Dow Mossman's life and about him writing The Stones of Summer. He was mentally drained after the publication of the book and he semi disappeared and retired. Sadly he didn't do much more. The line of the documentary was, more or less: here was, potentially, one of the all time great American writers who sadly never reached his… potential. Dow Mossman intrigued me as did the book and I loved the title so I tracked the book down – actually it wasn't too hard, it was republished after the documentary.

CM: It has a powerful opening. I spent a while reading it back in the 90's, but must confess that as with Madame Bovary, Paternak's Dr. Zhivago, and Jim Bob Joyce's Ullyses I turned away after the first hundred pages. From the description of the book's condition in Family Life, it seems like your character Joe Sweeney might be in the same boat.

PC: When I was describing Joe's room - as it was found after his death - I wanted to put a book in there that would have some kind of power, you know. I felt it important. I remember once my wife and I went to see a house we'd both loved (from the outside) for several years and then suddenly it came on the market because the owner had died. We went for a viewing and we were being shown around. It's always incredible when you see a house after you've imagined what it might be like inside. Anyway we were shown into the previous owner's bedroom and there on her desk was her diary and it was marked open at her last page by her pen. The power of that literally stopped me in my tracks. One day the owner of this wonderful house was writing in her diary, the next day her life was over.

PC: I considered Joe's diary being discovered in his bedroom but then I realised I didn't really want that kind of a book, also I figured Joe, being a farmer, wouldn't have any spare time in the day for writing in his diary so I decided to put something in there that made people think about Joe and his life and The Stones of Summer by someone who, for a different reason, had not reached his full potential either, filled the space perfectly.

CM: What are you working on now?

PC: I'm working on the new Inspector Christy Kennedy Mystery – A Pleasure to Do Death With You.

CM: What's on your nightstand at the moment? (books, I mean, but other items if you wanna….)

PC: True Compass by Edward Kennedy, The Gates by John Connolly and an alarm clock to get me up at six o'clock.

CM: Final question: Colonel Parker vs. Hannibal Lecter. Which is the most evil-?

PC: Well with that nice Mr. Hannibal Lecter you always knew what you were getting yourself into…

Learn more about Paul Charles, his career(s) and his series(es) at paulcharlesbooks.com. He blogs at http://paulcharlesbooks.blogspot.com. An unruly review of The Beautiful Sound of Silence will eventually appear here on criticalmick.com to determine how the the two detectives rank up against one another.

Yo! This interview transcript and all content on the DFA Guide site are copyright 2009 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.

Irate, huh? Managed to piss off another one? Direct your hatemail to mick @ mickhalpin dot com.

This Page Was Last Updated On 17 September, 2009.