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 MCGILLOWAY:  Bad 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?

The Once and Future Storyteller: a guest post by Dana Stabenow

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: You know those introductions where the host says, "Our guest needs no introduction," and then proceeds to tell you stuff you already know about the speaker? Yeah, this is one of those times. If you're a mystery lover, you'd have to have been living under a rock for the past two decades not to have heard of Dana Stabenow. New York Times bestseller. Edgar Award winner. Author of three science fiction novels, two thrillers, four Liam Campbell mysteries (Dana, can we have more Liam? Please?) And with the publication later this month of Bad Blood, twenty Kate Shugak books. Oh, and she's also been the president of the Alaska chapter of Sisters in Crime, the chief organizer of the 2001 Anchorage Left Coast Crime convention and chair of the 2007 Anchorage Bouchercon.

All this is a long-winded way of saying when Dana speaks about the book business, smart people listen. Today, she's going to tell us about literature's past, publishing's future, and how she got all those wonderful stories back into readers' hands.

Sometimes I think I should just unsubscribe from all my publishing listserves. This past week (written January 12th) I read three different stories about Barnes & Noble going under. I know I was not alone in noticing, because there was a great online yawp of anguished response from mid-list and wannabe authors, smugness from self-published authors and their adherents, and indifference from those authors who sell

enough in Wal-Mart and airport Hudsons and W.H. Smiths to hit the printed list every time, so they don’t give a damn.

In the face of all this continuing doom and gloom on the publishing front, I persevere! I refuse to give up on the notion that stories are necessary, that you and I and all of us scribblers are direct descendants of that guy sitting around the fire, hoping to get a few coins in his bowl before everyone rolls in for the night.

Recently I mentored a young friend through a high school lit class. The reading list was politically correct to the ne plus ultra and dozingly boring, but one of the titles was The Odyssey, and in this one instance I was amazed by how well the story had

improved since I had had to read it in high school. Athena had a sense of humor! Who knew?

Homer knew. He was that guy, sitting around the fire, trying to keep people awake long enough to pitch a few drachmas into his bowl. Comedy and sex, The Odyssey has plenty of both, and that’s what kept people up at night. Still do.

So if stories are necessary, if Homer proved it three thousand years ago and

Michael Connelly, Diana Gabaldon and Stephen King are still proving it today, it follows

that people will seek out stories wherever they can find them. On the bookshelves of local libraries, on the shelves at indie bookstores, at used bookstores, at bookfinder.com, yes, at Barnes & Noble, and on e-readers, studies and statistics say

again and again that people are reading more than ever before.

Ah. E-books. You knew I was headed there.

Two years ago I had sixteen books out of print. This year? None. And once all the books were again available, this time on Kindle and Nook and iBooks and Kobo, you know what happened? Everybody bought them, and at a time when print sales werec

dropping like Wile E. Coyote over a cliff the e-book sales drove the sales of my next print book onto the extended NYT bestseller list. My titles were available for the first time in the UK, and everybody bought them there, too. A UK publisher took note and is now bringing the others out there in e and in print. I’m now a bestseller in Italy, and last I heard I’m about to be published in France.

It’s a whole new world, folks. Writers have never had choices like these. You can write, design and publish your own books direct to Kindle, like John Locke or Amanda Hocking. Like Hocking you can then abandon self-publication for a four-book contract

with my publisher for $2 million. (They never offered me that kind of money.)

 
You can hire an intermediary to do the heavy lifting for you, like I do, where

somebody else handles the design and the uploading and collects all that lovely lucre for you. You have to pay them a percentage, but you have that much more time to write. Like I said, choices.

Or you can go the traditional route, and sign on with a print publisher. Some things traditional publishers still do better than anyone, produce actual books, tour authors, get heard above the noise. If you’re lucky you get a great editor who loves your

stuff and makes sure it gets good covers and good promotion. I’ve been that lucky, and it’s a nice place to be.

But it follows that if so many authors are publishing in so many different venues, it must be worth our while. Which means readers are still coming to us for stories, still curling up next to us by the fire. Barnes & Noble may not survive, but the need, the

hunger for good stories always will, and readers will seek them out. All we have to do is

write them and make them available.

Stop reading those listserves and get back to work.


                                                                      


I know we have quite a few aspiring and novice writers on our back blog. What do you think about the future of publishing? Are you shooting for traditional publication, or are you considering D-I-Y? And for you readers, does it make a difference how the book gets into your hands? Hop onto the comments and join the discussion.

Dana Stabenow's twentieth Kate Shugak novel, Bad Blood, will be out on February 26. You can read excerpts if it, and her other books, at her website. You can friend Dana on Facebook, follow her on Twitter as @DanaStabenow,  swap book recommendations at Goodreads, and check out her voluminous photo stream at Flickr. Want more? Dana also blogs delicious recipes for the solo cook at Feast For One.