Critical Mick

Reviews Free of Rules.

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

Like Guinness, Only Darker

Thank fuck someone at last 'gets it'! Critical Mick and The Dark Place author Sam Millar discuss why Millar's places are darker than most, how he writes his crime fiction, Brendan Behan, Brian Moore and the great James M. Cain, plus, How to Speak Belfast-ese. Unruly email interview, October 2009.

Critical Mick: Karl Kane is an alpha male. What about you?

Sam Millar: When I was about fifteen with testosterone pouring out of my ears, I was all that. A few years in the cages of Long Kesh, The Blanket, and American penitentiaries soon brings you down to earth. I even began calling myself Samantha, for a while.

CM: As of this writing, Ireland is preparing to accept two released Guantanamo detainees. If you met them down your local pub, what would your message for them be?

SM: Are you two eejits out of your heads coming to a shitty place like this? Oh, and I'll have a Southern Comfort – large.

Critical Mick's review of Sam Millar's The Dark Place

CM: And if these two are arrested for grand theft or domestic violence within a year? SM: I told you that you were fucking crazy to come here. Now you're going to a darker place far worse that the Bay – the Crum... CM: In The Dark Place, Karl Kane is up against a killer with a murderous sexual perversion so deviant, I am afraid the Vice squad will smash down my door if I Google to see if it really exists. Where the hell did you come to know such a thing-? SM: Worked for a few years in a couple of abattoirs both here and in the States. Watched animals being forced-fed for human consumption. Horrendous. Decided to turn the tables, so to speak. CM: Your places are darker than most. You've seen (and written) worse things than most good people know exist.

SM: I like the way you put 'good' in there. The writing is cathartic for me, helping to lance a load of poison in my system. Don't know if it is working, but it sure as hell feels good.

CM: And you've lived in America where it is legal and real, so: your opinion of capital punishment, please.

SM: Dead against it. I've smelt the rope too many times to enjoy it.

CM: Writers create characters, subject them to trial, and execute them in ways unimaginably cruel and unusual. Is there any responsibility there? Is it the exorcism of demons? Or is it all just a laugh?

SM: Mostly a laugh, but as I stated earlier, it can be cleansing. Where else (apart from Ballymena) can you murder some poor bastard and get away with it?

CM: Would your answer have been the same while you were still incarcerated?

SM: No. Did I say no? Actually, I meant no.

CM: Ambrose Bierce defined the novel as "a short story padded." Up his own arse? Or what?

SM: I like to think of a novel as short stories looking for a place to be housed. Actually, I fully agree with Bierce, so I must be up my own arse, as well. Most novelists can't write short stories, even though they think they can. Their problem is never knowing when to shut the fuck up, and not understanding the term 'short'.

Editorial Note: Sam Millar's short story "The Barber" appeared in Albedo One Issue 25. The text is available for free online.

CM: How do you write? Pen and paper? Word processor? Hammering away on the keys of an old Royal Quiet DeLuxe, like Hemingway and Karl Kane?

SM: Longhand, then onto the PC. A habit from my days in prison.

CM: Usually when main characters are writers, it pisses me off to no end. Creating an alter ego who's a famous author? That's wish fulfilment, or just plain sad that the best someone can come up with is a dim rehash of Murder She Wrote. But Karl Kane is a wannabe writer. You've pulled something off that's both fresh and funnier!

SM: Thank fuck someone at last 'gets it'! Kane wants to be writer, but in all probability never will. Secretly, I want to be a private investigator, but have more chance of winning the Booker Prize.

CM: Are his rejections drawn from your own experience? Or can you not say without risking another booksigning fight-fight?

SM: All based on my own crucifying and cringing experiences, I have to admit. Worse, I still get them, and no doubt will have a few more waiting for me, down the rocky road. I remember some wanker writing that rejection slips toughen you up. Bollocks! All they do is depress the shit out of you.

CM: It's odd that Kane churns out manuscripts, but none of his writing appears in your novel.

SM: That's why he keeps getting rejection slips. His writing isn't good enough to appear in any of my novels.

CM: Kane's investigation takes him from the kingdom of the homeless to the hunting lodges of Belfast's super-rich. Gay bars and mega-million property developments, abandoned prisons soon to be demolished. He is beaten so badly he is spitting teeth, and he turns around and does unto others. The police are utterly powerless, his best friend is only at home with corpses. How much of that is real Northern Ireland 2009, and how much is Noir so emphatically blackened that its eyes have been gouged out?

SM: I didn't realise how depressing the North was until you described it so beautifully in that paragraph. There is a new noir coming down the lane heading this way. It's called noir nua. A bit like Guinness, only darker, and Karl Kane's carrying it. Be with you next year...

CM: What the hell was in that apple pie-?

SM: All I'm willing to say is that it sure as hell wasn't apples...

CM: Each of TDP's chapters begins with a fitting quotation from Jack London, William Shakespeare, Raymond Chandler or another literary Hulk. Codged from a book of quotations in tribute to Colin Dexter? Or have you read all these past masters with highlighter in hand?

SM: There you go mentioning the Hulk, again! Jack London, yes. Chandler, yes. The rest? Nah. Just pretending to have culture, but fooling not a soul.

CM: Back to Brian Moore. The Statement. His Lies of Silence. And Judith Hearne. Discuss.

SM: The Statement. An almost noir story because of the main character, the fascist and Nazi collaborator, Pierre Brossard, accused of murdering Jews during the war, and now hiding in France and sheltered by priests. The true strength of the book was Moore's neutrality, refusing to judge such a ghastly character, leaving it to the reader to decide.

SM: Lies of Silence. An embarrassing novel falling into every tired and worn-out cliché in the book – and boy does that book have them! I think he regretted that particular tome, years later. One wonders whatever possessed Moore to pen it. Probably because he was possessed at the time, no doubt, and up to his neck in debt.

SM: The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. A timeless classic and my all-time favourite Moore. Written from Judith Hearne's perspective, it is a thought-provoking insight into loneliness and desperation of a socially isolated spinster in Belfast. No matter how cynical you are, you can't help feel for the woman, despite Moore making it almost impossible to empathise with her - or indeed any of the characters in the novel. Of all his books, this is the one I would recommend. A treasure.

CM: You used to run a comic book shop, unless I am mistaken. Would you stand up in defence of graphic novels? Superhero shit? What about sci-fi? Horror?

SM: Yes, had a couple of comic stores in New York before the barbarians in the FBI gatecrashed the party and destroyed my impressive collection. Love all the above genres. There is an ingrained snobbery against graphic novels – usually by people ignorant of the importance and sheer beauty of the works. I'm a fanatic when it comes to comics. That was the main reason I did the Brinks. My insatiable appetitive for more comics was a bit like Galactus consuming planets (only true believers would understand that part about Galactus). Collecting comics is worse than drugs. Honest.

CM: Have you read Gerard Brennan's short story collection, Possession, Obsession and a Diesel Compression Engine?

SM: Not yet, because he keeps saying he's going to send me a signed copy, but never does. Too tight, the tight-arsed git. He had a great run of 'short stories' in the AndyTown News, a while back. Everyone was talking about it, saying how great it was. I have to admit, he scares me sometimes, what's going on in his head...

CM: Did you see that Watchmen flick? And---?

SM: Yes. Loved it. Love Moore's dark vision and almost nihilist bleaching of all things humane. If Moore were a weapon, we'd all be shitting out of our ears.

CM: You, like myself, are a renowned plugger (no, I don't mean it in the filthy sense of the word, either), What's the most recent book you've read that's made you say "Damn I've got to tell someone about this!"

SM: The Vengeful Virgin, by Gil Brewer, published by the greatest crime-publishing house in the business, Hard Case. This is classic crime noir from the days when real classics were being created. Eighteen-year-old Shirley Angela conspires with her lover to murder her wealthy, dying stepfather and steal his money - a scheme that turns disastrous when jealousy and betrayal come into play. It's a gritty story, sexually very explicit for the 50s and in the style of the great James M. Cain. Like all genuine noir stories, none of the characters are particularly likeable (just like my own books) but the writing is so mesmerising that even if you're not a crime fan, you're quickly sucked in. Believable and tense. It's a must read for all aficionado of crime noir, and even those not inclined to be. I keep having these dreams that Hard Case contracted me to publish one of my books...

CM: If (like the music industry in this file-sharing age) publishing implodes and it's almost impossible to make a living by it, what will you do? I gather from TDP that your locksmithery is well beyond the bump and shim.

SM: I'm hardly making a living from my writing, as it is! Good job I still have those millions from the Brinks robbery. If I couldn't write, I would spend the rest of my life watching re-runs of The Wire (sad, I know). Coincidently, The Guardian says it's going to put my essay of The Wire in their up-coming book of The Wire. I was going to say no because the fuckers tore into The Dark Place, but I have relented (I'm such a crawler).

CM: What would you miss, if you weren't a writer?

SM: Meeting people at book signings. I know it sounds corny as fuck, but it makes it all worthwhile when someone tells you they enjoyed your book (even if they are lying through their teeth, and are just trying to comfort you because no one else showed up to buy a copy...)

CM: What would you be glad as fuck about?

SM: Apart from all politicians dropping dead in the morning? My publisher really appreciating my talent and paying me my worth, instead of laughing in my face each time I ask for an increase in royalties.

CM: What's your poison?

SM: Southern Comfort, warm on a cold Northern night in Belfast.

CM: You go to the doctor tomorrow and he tells you that you have a shockingly short span left to live. Maybe time enough for one short story, one last clear moment, message or insight. Would you write? What would you write?

SM: I'd probably cry first, and then write the follow-up to "Rain" (Brian Moore winner) just to piss off the rest of my family for revealing more dirty family secrets.

CM: What are you working on now? I hear you are Searching For The Dead.

SM: Dead of Winter, will probably be the next Kane book, followed by Searching for The Dead.

CM: Have we read any of the same shtuff? (Critical Mick Full alphabetic index) Was my review way off about them?

SM: Noticed most of my fucking books weren't there (with the exception of The Dark Place).

Ed Note: There's a Cormac Millar. Does that count?

SM: Anyway, Ken Bruen is always great value for money. Carl Hiaasen is a master storyteller. I loved Stormy Weather. Surprised you don't have any Nelson De Mille on your menu? Laura Lippman is a lovely writer. Brian McGilloway, Declan Burke and Paul Charles, of course. Brendan Nolan's Phoenix Park is fascinating (have a signed copy!). And my all-time favourite writer next to Cormac McCarthy, Walter Macken, one of Ireland's unsung heroes. Beautiful. I have to admit what great and refined taste you have. And just to add some useless information: my own portrait rests proudly beside Macken's portrait in Kenny's bookshop's famous wall in Galway.

Ed Note: In 2007, Mick played a very small part in an audio interview between Rafael Guzmán and Fr. Walter Macken Jr, in which the son reflected upon his father's mighty legacy. Yes, this is a shameless plug. Go download it, punk!

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

SM: Re-reading John Kennedy's classic, Warts and All, for the umpteenth time, and still laughing out loud at the balls on that man (no, I never saw him naked, but there I go again mentioning balls). I'd love to say my bed is littered with heavy-hitting books of wisdom and originality, but my wife is the only thing littering the bed at the moment (and an extremely large iguana lizard named Anton Chigurh, after the brilliant nasty piece of work in No Country for Old Men.). Oh, and a few signed Cormac McCarthy and Graham Green's floating about. They're my bible...

For his good taste, good humor, and especially good writing, Sam Millar has been nominated for the 2009 Award. Learn more about him and his books at millarcrime.com!

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 4 October, 2009.