Saturday, June 17, 2017

Brian McGilloway--Bad Blood



DEBORAH CROMBIE Nothing gives me more pleasure than to discover a new series--and as you can probably guess, a new (to me, at least!) British series tops the list. Brian McGilloway's Lucy Black books are fabulous and have now shot to the top of my to-read pile!


Here's what Lee Childs has to say about the books: “Brian McGilloway blends timeless values with ripped-from-the-headlines issues to produce some of the very best crime fiction being written today.” —Lee Child, #1New York Times bestselling author

You can't beat a recommendation from Lee Childs, and I can certainly second it. Also, I'm fascinated by writing that gives us a window into the complex political and emotional landscape of Northern Ireland (something that as an American I find really challenging) and Brian McGilloway's BAD BLOOD ticks all the boxes. 

Here's Brian to tell us more.


BRIAN MCGILLOWAYBad Blood is the fourth Lucy Black novel I’ve written and my ninth in total since Borderlands appeared ten years ago, in April 2007. With each book, I’ve tried to reflect something of the real world events that surround the crimes and cases, which first Devlin and now Lucy Black investigate. In the writing of Bad Blood, one event loomed large – the Brexit vote over Britain’s membership of the European Union – and the way in which the debate around it, at times, seemed to normalise extremist views.  Many of the tabloid papers here focused on Immigration and published viewpoints and language that was, without doubt, inflammatory. It was against that backdrop that the book developed: a book about hatred and the ways in which people attempt to legitimise it and become complicit in the violence it encourages.

The seeds of the book were planted in July 2014, when a slogan, which read ‘Romans Out’, was spray painted on a wall in a housing estate in Belfast. It was aimed at Roma families and marked the second such targeting of refugees in the city, after a concerted campaign in 2009 saw almost 100 Romanians having to leave their homes and flee the country.

What made the slogan, and associated events, most interesting to me was how the old sectarian divisions between Protestants and Catholics, Unionists and Nationalists, seemed to have mutated, how a new enemy had been identified. These attacks were primarily carried out in housing estates and were blamed on right-wing groups tied to paramilitaries. They were, put simply, exercises in the ethnic cleansing of a community.

It was clear that some in the communities in question felt that outsiders moving into the area were diluting their sense of identity. Already feeling left behind by the Peace Process and the failure to see manifested the promised prosperity peace would bring, and betrayed by their politicians who were in Government with old enemies, such individuals were easy targets for extremists to exploit their discontent. And it wasn’t just happening in Northern Ireland.

Though the causes of such discontent varied from one country to another, it was a pattern being replicated across the UK with the rise of UKIP and the dawn of Brexit. Whether Brexit was symptom or cause, there could be no denying that the debate around it does seem to have lead to a rise in hate crime: indeed in the two weeks following the vote, recorded hate crimes in the UK rose by 46%, with over 3,000 incidents reported to the police.

The targeting of the discontented, and the use of inflammatory rhetoric to engage them was further evidenced in the rise in support for, among others, the National Front in France and, arguably, in the 2016 US election. There was a reason why people felt left behind, disempowered, unheard. That was what I wanted to explore in this book.

Of course, it goes without saying that Northern Ireland has an added history of those who would use religion as a way to further enflame discontent. Various events over the past few years here have lead to a widening of the gulf between those who, for example, support gay marriage, and those who see such a thing as antithetical to their religious beliefs. All it takes is someone with a bit of authority to stir that up, to pour petrol on already smouldering embers rather than pouring oil on troubled waters. Northern Irish history is not short on people hiding hatred behind a white collar or a national flag.

All of these things collide in Bad Blood. 


DEBS: Here's more about BAD BLOOD: A young man is found in a riverside park, his head bashed in with a rock. The only clue to his identity is an admission stamp for the local gay club.

DS Lucy Black is called in to investigate. As Lucy delves into the community, tensions begin to rise as the man's death draws the attention of the local Gay Rights group to a hate-speech Pastor who, days earlier, had advocated the stoning of gay people and who refuses to retract his statement.

Things become further complicated with the emergence of a far right group targeting immigrants in a local working class estate. As their attacks escalate, Lucy and her boss, Tom Fleming, must also deal with the building power struggle between an old paramilitary commander and his deputy that threatens to further enflame an already volatile situation.

Hatred and complicity abound in the days leading up to the Brexit vote in McGilloway's new Lucy Black thriller. Compelling and current, Bad Blood is an expertly crafted and acutely observed page-turner, delivering the punch that readers of LITTLE GIRL LOST have grown to expect.

Brian McGilloway was born in Derry, Northern Ireland. After studying English at Queen’s University, Belfast, he took up a teaching position in St Columb’s College in Derry, where he was Head of English. He is the author of the New York Timesbestselling Lucy Black series, all to be published by Witness. Brian lives near the Irish borderlands with his wife and their four children.

 DEBS: Brian will be checking in today to chat with us from Northern Ireland! So stop in and say "hi", and tell us, REDs and readers,  how do you feel about current events being mirrored in crime fiction?



49 comments:

  1. It’s always exciting to find new stories, new books, and new [to me] writers . . . Brian, “Bad Blood” sounds intriguing and I’m looking forward to meeting your Lucy Black.
    I think having current events mirrored in a story gives it relevance and a sense of immediacy that adds an extra dimension to the narrative . . . .

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    1. Hi Joan. Thanks very much - and I hope you enjoy meeting Lucy if you get a chance. I firmly believe that fiction is at times the best way to analyse and understand our society, especially in such volatile as those through which we're currently living. B

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  2. As Joan said, I'm looking forward to meeting Lucy Black. I remember the Troubles very well as my best friend's mother was from Northern Ireland and in the late 1960s my friend's teen cousins visited often for summer break, we became pen pals and in the long fall-spring seasons we listened to the news on shortwave radio. The events you describe that triggered Bad Blood are reminiscent of those times with a world-wide difference. There seems to be a global predilection for intolerance now that used Brexit for it's fuse in the UK as here it used the recent election and elsewhere used other events.

    I agree with Joan that a subtext of current events give a story relevance. It helps to anchor the reader in a time and place and can give a glimpse into the moral matrix of the characters.

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    1. Thanks Kait - yes, there certainly has been a normalisation of intolerance across the board. I wonder to what extent the echo chambers of social media are responsible for it? We're so used to hearing our own views reflected back at us by our online friends, we begin to assume that our opinion is fact... B

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  3. We visited Northern Ireland year before last, and you could feel the lingering aura of The Troubles from the moment you crossed the border. Brian, do you have a personal connection to Northern Ireland and the unrest there and now?

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    1. Hi Hallie - thanks. Yes - I'm Irish and live on the Irish border - it lies less than 1km from my door. I was born in 74 so grew up through the violence and its aftermath. It's very much informed my world view and does bleed into my fiction - especially the idea that lawmakers and lawbreakers are often one and the same.

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    2. Hallie,

      Since you probably are not Catholic nor Protestant, did you have an easier time visiting Northern Ireland? I wondered about that.

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    3. NI is a lovely place and the people are generally great, especially to visitors. Unfortunately, old animosities became entrenched. It will take a few generations to get beyond them, but we're getting there, I hope.

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    4. Brian,

      I hope that my comment about religion did not offend you. I read an interesting book about US President Barack Obama's Irish ancestors. The book also mentioned that some of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence were either Irish Protestant immigrants themselves or descendants of Irish Protestants who emigrated to the Colonies.

      I was surprised to learn that Ireland had a Protestant church while England was still Catholic.

      Diana

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  4. Hi Brian. I just went off and bought your book.

    I very much hugely like current events being mirrored in my reading, book reading.
    I read more than anyone here, really more than anyone else in the presidentlyness history.
    I've not only read a book, I have had even more read to me.
    Which makes me the best read president EVER. And that's a fact. Google it.

    Ann in Rochester who go up way too early thing morning and should stop listening to the news.

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  5. You're on a roll this morning Ann! Welcome Brian--such a fascinating setting. I've not been to Ireland but I intend to get there. It's a good question about having current events in the book--in one sense, it dates what you're writing. In another, makes it come more alive. And there are some settings, Ireland probably one of them, that cannot be separated from what's going on there...

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    1. Thanks Lucy - I agree that it does date books, but I think crime thrives on such a potent sense of place and time that I think/hope readers accept that. the Moonstone is very much of it's time and place, but the themes and ideas of social injustice etc are still as relevant today. It's a fine line to tread to try to ensure it transcends its period - I only hope I've managed it.

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  6. Putting on my serious cap now, yes, I like to see events current to the time setting of the book. whether the book is about Cromwell's England or today's incredible world muddle. There is something in me that even loves a nuance to current stuff.

    It is what makes fiction real.

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    1. I agree, Finta. Events can be rooted in the moment, themes should be timeless. The issue reminds me of Patrick Kavanagh's poem Epic, which deals with how art and literature can transcend the local:
      I have lived in important places, times
      When great events were decided, who owned
      That half a rood of rock, a no-man's land
      Surrounded by our pitchfork-armed claims.
      I heard the Duffys shouting "Damn your soul!"
      And old McCabe stripped to the waist, seen
      Step the plot defying blue cast-steel -
      "Here is the march along these iron stones."
      That was the year of the Munich bother. Which
      Was more important? I inclined
      To lose my faith in Ballyrush and Gortin
      Till Homer's ghost came whispering to my mind.
      He said: I made the Iliad from such
      A local row. Gods make their own importance.

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  7. Thanks for hosting me today and for discussing the books. I'll be dropping in and out throughout the day here so please do ask anything/comment on anything and I'll try my best to respond sensibly...

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  8. In these times we are living in, just browsing the news headlines--in a newspaper, on tv, online--stories scream at us, begging to be written-- using current events could 'date' a story if the news is all the story. If, however, the characters are enmeshed in that setting, and the plot offers something more than a rehash of a current event--then, you've got yourself a story that vibrates with meaning and will stay with us--and turn the lens of fiction on the human condition. And bravo for being willing to do so, Brian--these are hard times. I look forward to meeting Lucy.

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    1. Thanks Flora. That's very kind. Yes - the events should be the tuning fork that sets the tone of the piece, rather than being the whole story in and of themselves.

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    2. Brian, thanks for posting the Patrick Kavanagh poem--another whose work I see I need to check on.

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  9. So fascinating. Congratulations! I think current events in books are thought-provoking, but can be risky. ( I say this as someone who does it all the time.). Current can quickly become less current :-) especially during the time it takes to write and publish a book.
    References become dated, so quickly, so it is a juggle to use current events as a concept, and not as a plot point.
    It Definitely makes the books seem more real… And I' always try to be conscious of having my characters work and live in the context of the real world.
    If a character in one of my box is affected by a bomb scare, for instance , I can't let that reference go by without at least alluding to the marathon bombing. Because a real person in Bostón would think that.
    Congratulations on your books! And thank you for the long distance participation!

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    1. Thanks Hank. Sadly, in Northern Ireland, current seems to last for about 70 years - plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose

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  10. Yeah, reading backward now :-) what Flora said.

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    1. Hank,

      Do people ask you if you are Irish because your last name is Ryan?

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  11. The current turn of our world has us all scratching our heads about what's going on, how it happened, and why some believe it is the best thing ever, while others are sure it is the end of time. Fiction can help us unpack some of that by bringing the global down to the local, even individual level. The best fiction will stick around long enough to explain some of our era's madness to the next generation, so I think it's important to write about what's going on around us now. And, anyway, hate, anger, and despair never go away. They just find new channels to flow through. So thank you, Brian, for giving us a mirror to reflect some of the issues in your particular patch of the world.

    But I'm curious. Why did you move from writing about a male protagonist to writing about a woman? Do you have any problem weaving the particular challenges women face into the rest of your narrative?

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    1. HI Gigi. Yes, I agree about the local. I changed to a female protagonist because the story I had for Little Girl Lost involved a child found in snow. I needed a detective who would sit with the child in hospital and read fairy tales to her. one of the tales would trigger a reaction. It was clear to me that it couldn't be my male detective, Devlin, as he has his own children and wouldn't;t be alone with a child in that way anyway. I guess I wanted to make sure that if I was writing a new character, that they wouldn't;t be another version of Devlin, so i shifted from 1st person to 3rd, moved locations, changed from murder investigations to public protection, and then wanted to highlight the changes in the newly formed police force here, the PSNI, by having a young, female, Catholic detective lead the story. I guess Lucy is gentler in her approach than Devlin - more inclined to talk things out than act rashly. Most of the time...

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  12. Deborah,

    Did you discover this new series while you were in England or while you were in the USA?

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    1. Here in the US, although I imagine the books are published first in the UK, right, Brian?

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    2. Deborah,

      Thank you. I imagine these books would be published in the UK. I asked because on each visit to the UK, I continue to discover new authors and their books. I cannot recall seeing their books in bookstores in the USA.

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    3. Yes - I'm published first in the UK/Ireland. Thanks for the interest, Bibliophile.

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  13. Hi Brian, and thanks so much for being our guest today! I was going to ask Hank's question--do you worry about events being out of date by the time a book is conceived, written, and published? Although I think the human conditions you're exploring are universal as well as topical. I'm reading the The Forgotten Ones and I certainly don't have any sense of it being dated (2014)

    I would also echo Gigi--why switch to a female protagonist? I'm really enjoying Lucy.

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    1. Thanks Deborah. As I say, I suspect these issues are going to be around for some time. Delighted you like Lucy. My own voice is closer to Devlin, is suspect, but I enjoy writing the Lucy books a lot - though I rely on my wife, Tanya, quite a bit to tell me when Lucy does something that just wouldn't sit right with her.

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  14. Brian,

    Welcome to Jungle Reds! I remember the Peace Process in the 1990s. I have an unusual question to ask. Perhaps this has been asked by other people.

    Since Lucy Black is a woman, what was it like to develop your story with a main female character?

    Your book sounds interesting and I put it on my TBR list.

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    1. Thanks Bibliophile. I wrote the first Devlin after my first son was born and named him after my son. Lucy came about, in part, because after 3 boys, we had our first daughter in 2010. I guess it made me reflect on father-daughter issues quite a bit. Little Girl Lost, the first book, is all about failing fathers. The books always reflect my own personal fears or concerns as much as social ones; or in the case of the more recent ones, my anger at the way we treat the more vulnerable in our society.

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    2. Congratulations on having boys and a girl. So your daughter would be about 6 or 7 years old. Has she read a book of poetry called "And Now You Are Six" by A.A. Milne. I loved that book when I was 6.

      Look forward to reading your books.

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  15. Just bought the first book in the series (this is why I love my kindle) ..I enjoy reading about Northern Ireland.

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    1. Thanks very much for supporting the books, Homeless. I hope you enjoy it.

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  16. I've read everything Stuart Neville and Adrian McKinty wrote. My family having been gone so long, it's been difficult to understand the intricacies of living in a warzone on a day-to-day basis. I've read all the history books but fiction can bring it to life like history books cannot. I will be putting you on my TBR.

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    1. Thanks Keenan. Stuart and Adrian are brilliant writers. We're all tackling growing up here from slightly different angles, but I love reading their work. Reading Stuart's new one at the moment which is out next month: you're in for a treat with it. Hope you enjoy the Lucy books if you get a chance.

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  17. I love being introduced to a new-to-me series, so thank you Debs and more importantly, Brian. I think the question of setting books in a particular time period is an interesting one. The specifics of a time and a place are powerful, but it's the universality of the characters' experiences that keep a reader engaged. The struggle for survival, acceptance, love, agency over one's life--readers can relate to that no matter the time and place. The best books capture the specific and the universal. Can't wait to get started reading, Brian!

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    1. I agree Ingrid. And thank you - I hope you enjoy the book.

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  18. So many times I've used fiction to help me understand and get a sense of historical events. There's really nothing quite like being inside the mind of a character who is experiencing certain events, be it the plague or war. Of course, the author must be one whom I trust to have done the research and be able to integrate the facts into a compelling story. Brian, your books sound like that check all the boxes that historical fiction should. Lucy Black is certainly someone I want to get to know, and through her learn more about Irish history. I've got the series on my wish list on Amazon now. Thanks for visiting the Reds today.

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    1. Thanks Kathy. Yes - you need to feel that the author has lived the world they're writing, I think, which allows us as readers to fully inhabit it too throughout the reading of the book. Hope you enjoy the books if you get a chance to read any of them.

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  19. Welcome, Brian. I am delighted to have Debs introduce us to your series as I've always been fascinated at the complexity of the politics of Northern Ireland. Hatred and complicity - very much a sign of the times. Really looking forward to meeting Lucy.

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    1. Thanks Jenn. These are not pleasant times at all. I think writing lets us impose some sense of order or control on a world lacking in both at the moment...

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  20. Brian, I so agree. I think that's one of the main reasons many of us are attracted to crime fiction.

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  21. Brian, I so agree. I think that's one of the main reasons many of us are attracted to crime fiction.

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  22. Absolutely, Deborah. It's cathartic and restores order: I believe it's our generation's iteration of Greek tragedy.

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  23. This book sounds quite interesting and I'm going to have to add it to my ever expanding TBR pile!

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