Kevin McCarthy's Blog, page 2

Out now in all good...and not so good...bookshops and on ...

Out now in all good...and not so good...bookshops and on Amazon
The Civil War may be over, but in this thrilling historical novel,the battle for the West is only just beginning...



Dakota Territory, 1866. Following the murders of a frontier fort’s politically connected sutler and his wife in their illicit off-post brothel, Lieutenant Martin Molloy and his long-suffering orderly, Corporal Daniel Kohn, are ordered to track down the killers and return with “boots for the gallows” to appease powerful figures back in Washington.  The men journey west to a distant outpost in a valley at once beautiful and savage, where the soldiers inside the fort—from Irish Fenian rebels to anti-immigrant nativists—prove to be violently opposed to their investigations.

Meanwhile, unable to adapt to life as migrant farm laborers in peacetime Ohio, Irish immigrant brothers and Civil War veterans, Michael and Thomas O’Driscoll, reenlist in the army and are shipped west to Fort Phil Kearny in the heart of the Powder River Valley.  Here they are thrown into ferocious combat with Red Cloud’s coalition of Native tribes fighting American expansion into their hunting grounds.  Amidst the daily carnage, Thomas finds a love that will lead to a moment of violence as brutal as any they have witnessed in battle—a moment that will change their lives forever.

Blending intimate historical detail and emotional acuity, Wolves of Eden sets these four men on a deadly collision course in a haunting narrative that explores the injustice of warfare and the resilience of the human spirit.
“Kevin McCarthy is a fresh voice, and a keen one. This Irish thriller writer has ventured boldly into a new continent and a new history. His place is the American West in the 1860s, when the long sad carnage was winding its grim way toward Wounded Knee. With this story of profound tragedy, his new readers will be many.” -- Larry McMurtry, author of  The Last Kind Words Saloon
“When it comes to saturation-level historical authenticity—the sense of being there, alive and at large in the vanished past—I think Kevin McCarthy is in the company of masters like Patrick O’Brian and Hilary Mantel. Wolves of Eden is also a shiningly humane novel...about the immigrant soldiers who found themselves on the front lines during the harrowing seizure of the American West.” --Stephen Harrigan, author of The Gates of the Alamo and A Friend of Mr. Lincoln
McCarthy has a fine sense of voice and period detail, but it's the well-drawn characters and riveting scenes that make this novel memorable.--Kirkus Reviews

Set in late 1866 amid Red Cloud’s War in the Dakota Territory, McCarthy’s third novel is a historically rich blend of mystery, morality, and brutal frontier warfare...Though not for the squeamish, this is a riveting and propulsive mystery.--Publisher's Weekly

Published by W.W. Norton in November 2018The Civil War ma...

Published by W.W. Norton in November 2018
The Civil War may be over, but in this thrilling historical novel,the battle for the West is only just beginning...


Dakota Territory, 1866. Following the murders of a frontier fort’s politically connected sutler and his wife in their illicit off-post brothel, Lieutenant Martin Molloy and his long-suffering orderly, Corporal Daniel Kohn, are ordered to track down the killers and return with “boots for the gallows” to appease powerful figures back in Washington.  The men journey west to a distant outpost in a valley at once beautiful and savage, where the soldiers inside the fort—from Irish Fenian rebels to anti-immigrant nativists—prove to be violently opposed to their investigations.

Meanwhile, unable to adapt to life as migrant farm laborers in peacetime Ohio, Irish immigrant brothers and Civil War veterans, Michael and Thomas O’Driscoll, reenlist in the army and are shipped west to Fort Phil Kearny in the heart of the Powder River Valley.  Here they are thrown into ferocious combat with Red Cloud’s coalition of Native tribes fighting American expansion into their hunting grounds.  Amidst the daily carnage, Thomas finds a love that will lead to a moment of violence as brutal as any they have witnessed in battle—a moment that will change their lives forever.

Blending intimate historical detail and emotional acuity, Wolves of Eden sets these four men on a deadly collision course in a haunting narrative that explores the injustice of warfare and the resilience of the human spirit.
“Kevin McCarthy is a fresh voice, and a keen one. This Irish thriller writer has ventured boldly into a new continent and a new history. His place is the American West in the 1860s, when the long sad carnage was winding its grim way toward Wounded Knee. With this story of profound tragedy, his new readers will be many.” -- Larry McMurtry, author of  The Last Kind Words Saloon
“When it comes to saturation-level historical authenticity—the sense of being there, alive and at large in the vanished past—I think Kevin McCarthy is in the company of masters like Patrick O’Brian and Hilary Mantel. Wolves of Eden is also a shiningly humane novel...about the immigrant soldiers who found themselves on the front lines during the harrowing seizure of the American West.” --Stephen Harrigan, author of The Gates of the Alamo and A Friend of Mr. Lincoln

Irregulars Gone Global

Hi folks.  Just to let you know that Irregulars is now available worldwide via Amazon Kindle.  The hard copy is still available through the usual outlets everywhere, of course, but prior to now the Kindle edition was only sold through Amazon.uk.  And for $3.99?  Where would you get it?  Here is where!

And it is selling the odd copy, apparently...
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #109,528 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)#58 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Historical Fiction >  Irish #94 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Crime Fiction >  Kidnapping
#delightedauthor

See what I did there?

What He Said...Did I Really Say That?

Crime and the City...SolutionA friend brought this to my attention.  It is the transcript of a reading and Q&A I gave for the Dublin City Libraries Crime and the City series of lunchtime talks last year.  It's very wierd, reading a transcription of what you've said.  There is something of the deposition about it.  Something of the courtroom and something of that feeling you get when you hear yourself speaking on tape...

Listen to me.  On tape...  On video or iphone or ice-bucket challenge or whatever.

Despite how strange it is to read my own rather rambling verbiage word for word, I actually managed to say a lot that I really stand by, especially in the Q&A part where I talk about writing and editing and researching historical fiction.  It's here if you're interested.
Here's me on researching historical fiction.  Apparently I have a 'fraudulent gadfly's knowledge' of the Irish revolutionary period.  Hmmm...someone shut that guy up!:  
One of the pleasures of being a historical novelist, one of the pleasures and the banes, I suppose because a lot of the research is really fun to do and it’s really interesting and you wouldn’t write about if you weren’t interested in it in the first place. I’m doing a new novel which is not in this series, although I am going back to this series, I’ve found myself reading the diaries of this Pioneer woman – I’m literally falling asleep reading it and I was thinking why do I have to read this? But you do because the great thing about research is it takes the story in a different direction and quite often you think you have a story set and then you come across like the fact that there were female agents and the story goes in a completely different direction. I love that about research. I tend to research widely first and then go and research for things I need in the story specifically. It’s kind of daunting sometimes. I was on the radio with an historian recently and he had a vast, comprehensive knowledge of the subject and I have kind of a fraudulent gadfly’s, you know a magpie’s knowledge of it because fiction writers research to suit the story as much as anything. I could never write a scholarly treatise on the period. But the research suddenly it will throw something up from the dullest, most banal text and you suddenly think, I have to use that. That’s fascinating. Or what often happens too is your story will be going one direction and something you read will confirm it, you know, I wonder if they would have done that? and then suddenly you’ll just fortuitously stumble upon something – they did do that. Thank God!
http://dublincitypubliclibraries.com/...

What he said...Did I Really Say That?

Crime and the City...SolutionA friend brought this to my attention.  It is the transcript of a reading and Q&A I gave for the Dublin City Libraries Crime and the City series of lunchtime talks last year.  It's very wierd, reading a transcription of what you've said.  There is something of the deposition about it.  Something of the courtroom and something of that feeling you get when you hear yourself speaking on tape...  Listen to me.  On tape...  On video or iphone or ice-bucket challenge or whatever.

Despite how strange it is to read my own rather rambling verbiage word for word, I actually managed to say a lot that I really stand by, especially in the Q&A part where I talk about writing and editing and researching historical fiction.  It's here if you're interested.
Here's me on researching historical fiction.  Apparently I have a 'fraudulent gadfly's knowledge' of the Irish revolutionary period.  Hmmm...someone shut that guy up!:  
One of the pleasures of being a historical novelist, one of the pleasures and the banes, I suppose because a lot of the research is really fun to do and it’s really interesting and you wouldn’t write about if you weren’t interested in it in the first place. I’m doing a new novel which is not in this series, although I am going back to this series, I’ve found myself reading the diaries of this Pioneer woman – I’m literally falling asleep reading it and I was thinking why do I have to read this? But you do because the great thing about research is it takes the story in a different direction and quite often you think you have a story set and then you come across like the fact that there were female agents and the story goes in a completely different direction. I love that about research. I tend to research widely first and then go and research for things I need in the story specifically. It’s kind of daunting sometimes. I was on the radio with an historian recently and he had a vast, comprehensive knowledge of the subject and I have kind of a fraudulent gadfly’s, you know a magpie’s knowledge of it because fiction writers research to suit the story as much as anything. I could never write a scholarly treatise on the period. But the research suddenly it will throw something up from the dullest, most banal text and you suddenly think, I have to use that. That’s fascinating. Or what often happens too is your story will be going one direction and something you read will confirm it, you know, I wonder if they would have done that? and then suddenly you’ll just fortuitously stumble upon something – they did do that. Thank God!
http://dublincitypubliclibraries.com/...

Irregulars: A Virtual Bestseller?

Again, long time, no write...must try harder!

Some nice news a friend brought to my attention:  Irregulars  is #24 in Bestsellers in Irish Crime in the Kindle Store at the moment.  Very cool.  And I notice it's available for the low, low price of £4.62...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Irregulars-Se...

The novel is dead. Long live the novel...

At Fingal County Archives in March 14

I thought this piece by Will Self on the imminent demise of the novel in Saturday's Guardian Review section was interesting.  I haven't read a Will Self novel in many years--I see Cock and Bull and Great Apes on my shelf and remember liking them enough at the time; faint praise, I know...-- but his journalism is always insightful and witty when it doesn't try too hard. I particularly liked his essay for Esquire--someone linked it to me; I do not, as a rule, read Esquire--on taking his son to the Download metal festival last year.  (In it, he claimed to have 'liked' System of a Down's performance. If you're forced to 'like' one metal band in a hundred, they are certainly one of the ones to 'like'.)  Like the best columnists, he'll have you nodding your head in agreement in one paragraph and laughing derisively in the next.  Anyway, he says the novel's dead and it's for real this time.  Which begs the question: what in God's name have I been doing for the last year and a half? Answer: researching and writing about a third of a novel which, by Self's reckoning, will be DOA some time next year when it's finished...  Pssst, don't give up the day job, Kev!


The novel's dead?  Not this one...

And if Self is right, then I must be something of a necrophiliac because I'm really enjoying Ronan Bennett's Zugzwang at the moment.  Set in 1914 St Petersberg, it is a literary thriller, an historical crime novel of sorts, involving chess, bolshi radicals, psychoanalysis and anti-semitism.  It is similar, in some ways, perhaps, to the Harris novel, A Gentleman and a Spy, which I wrote about a couple of months ago and has a touch of the Alan Fursts about it as well, which is about the highest praise I can give an historical novel.  Not finished with it yet, but it's a powerful read.  I can't believe I haven't read Bennett before, an Irish writer who writes seriously, about serious things without ever losing sight of his plot or characters. He writes the kind of novels I try to write--with varying degrees of success on my part--and the kind which Will Self has a go at in his article linked above.  Highly recommended.

Researching and Writing Historical Fiction

Hello, folks, long time no write.  Actually, I've been writing a good deal, which is why I've been absent from this blog for the past two months but that's the way it should be, I suppose.  I sometimes wonder where other writers get the time to write any fiction at all what with their voluminous web output on FB, Twitter and the rest, but hey, to each his own.  My time is taken up with the day job, family, sports (my own and the kids'), reading and the writing.
Writing...more important to me than table tennis...but only justSometimes, the writing rises to the top of the hierarchy, especially nearing deadlines or when things are really cranking (though never, really, above the day job as my kids do fairly put away the grub and my wife and I do occasionally like to pay the mortgage, so...), but mostly it just hums along somewhere above my passion for soccer and table tennis and reading other people's books (especially on my new Kindle which I have come to love in a way I wouldn't have thought possible before my wife and kids got it for me as a birthday gift, along with a bathrobe/dressing gown; again, I never knew I needed one when ratty tracksuit bottoms and fleeces seemed to do just fine, but now I can't imagine having lived without one; I'd wear it to work if I could!) and somewhere below, as I said, the day job and of course, family.  (Kids...who'd have thought they'd require so much of your time...and attention...and money?)  Social media, for me, therefor falls into a level just below that of my own personal laziness and beer time.  Not to say I don't like it but if it comes down to a choice between actually writing fiction or writing the blog or drinking beer or playing table tennis, blogging and Facebook lose every time.

So, mea culpa mucho.  (See, I knew you were angry!)
Beautiful Fingal--The Irish Sea coast at Donabate. It's always sunny
like that, honest!
Anyway, just to let folks know, I've been asked to give a talk for the Fingal County Archives on 'Researching and Writing Historical Fiction.'  It's on Tuesday in Swords and I'm delighted to be doing it as it is for the local county council who, much maligned though county councils are in Ireland these days, are (county council, plural or singular?  hmmm...) really great at maintaining this wonderful part of the world that is County Fingal/North County Dublin.  I'm honoured they asked me.  Come along if you're around.  Details are here!


http://www.independent.ie/regionals/f...

Irregulars Hits a Best of 2013 List in the USA...Where It Still Ain't Published! (J'accuse!)

Been a long time folks.  Out with the old and in with the new and all that.  Just a quick post here with a link to the Kirkus Reviews site where Irregulars has been chosen as one of J. Kingston Pierce's Top Ten Crime Fiction Reads of 2013.  It's a serious honour as Mr Pierce knows his stuff, being the curator of the seminal Rap Sheet blog.  He's one of the best in the business, is Mr Pierce.  Gracias, sir!
 

Here's the link:  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/postmortem-tagging-my-10-favorite-crime-novels-201/

Zola's Courageous Attack on the Army
for Wrongly Convicting Dreyfuss of Treason Historical Fiction at its FinestAlso got a chance over the holidays to catch up on some novels I've been wanting to read for awhile but wanted to savour.  Any fan of historical fiction could do far worse than Robert Harris's new tome on the Dreyfuss Affair, An Officer and a Spy.
 Much like the story of the assassination of Heydrich in HHhH that I wrote about in a previous post, I knew the bare bones of the Dreyfuss affair--Zola's involvement, the antisemitism rife in the French Army and right wing press at the end of the 19th Century etc.--but I didn't know the details and ultimately, the outcome.  Harris does not invent characters or events in the book--dialogue and some incident, I imagine, but according to his afterward, he sticks as close to the published record as he can to explore the case.  The result is a novel, an historical thriller, that is gripping to the end and at times, very well written.  A totally different approach to historical fiction than that taken by Binet in his HHhH and equally fine in my opinion.  More than one way to skin a novel!

Gigs and Gowns Galore!

Eoin McNamee, Conor Brady, Stewart Neville, myself and Michael Russell
on the Historical Crime Fiction Panel at Trinity College's Irish Crime Fiction: A Festival.
I'm the one with the beard...Well it's been some kind of week for yours truly, I have to say. Saturday was Irish Crime Fiction: A Festival, hosted by Trinity College, where I was lucky enough to be invited to join a panel of writers to discuss Historical Crime Fiction.  It was an honour to be included among the likes of Stewart Neville, Conor Brady, Michael Russell and Eoin McNamee.  As I've written here before, Eoin is one of the best writers in Ireland--in any genre--and he did a great job moderating the panel.  The turnout, as well, was brilliant.  There's many a time I say, 'Oh, yeah, I'll definitely hit that gig/reading/match at 10 am on a Saturday morning and...well...don't.'  Fair play to the folks for turning out and I hope the early morning was worth it.  There were great panels throughout the day, as well as a surprise screening of the yet to be released...Homeland?  Something? I can't remember the name of it though I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Stallone on the pen and Stratham kicking serious amounts of unreconstructed ass...need I say more?  No doubt you'll find it on Netflix soon.

John and Michael Connolly, gentlemen both and a fantastic interview...
They should have used the thrones behind!But the highlight of the day was John Connolly's interview with Michael Connolly.  Now, one might say that's far too many Connollys in one building (and you'd probably be right) but the interview was insightful, entertaining and warm.  Michael must do hundreds of them and yet John was able to get him to open up in a way--about Bosch, books and jazz, among other things--that felt like he was saying it to an audience for the first time.  It's said that it's a bad idea to meet your heroes.  At the post-gig drinks put on for participants/panelists, I got a chance to do just that and Michael was a gentleman.  People say some mad things, altogether.


Me and the Missus at The Bord Gais Energy Book AwardsAnd then Tuesday was the awards banquet for the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards for which Irregulars was shortlisted in the Crime Fiction Book of the Year category.  Well, Irregulars didn't win--Louise Phillips won for her very fine novel, The Doll's House--but it was brilliant to be shortlisted in such august company.  The shortlisted authors, Jane Casey and William Ryan, both of whom have been nominated before, continued the tradition of the nominated crime writers meeting for a drink before the official drinks and hopefully this will carry on in the future.  The nicest part of the evening for myself and Regina by far, was meeting--some for the first time, others again--the other crime writers.  To my knowledge, none of the other categories does this.  (Can you imagine the celebrity chefs in the Best Cookbook category getting together for canapes?  'These canapes are shit...did you make them?' Meow!)
Some hours after the glitz and glamour and shortly before they shut the residents' bar...
Congrats to Billy Callaghan, a fellow New Island writer who won in the Single Short Story category for his story The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind .  Click the link to read it.  Brilliant story, smashing guy. Myself, eyes closed, Eoin Purcell, Commissioning Editor at New Island,
his partner Blanaid, Billy Callaghan and his father at the Irish Book Awards. Well done Billy!
Also, congrats to Niamh Boyce for winning best newcomer award for her historical novel--set in Irish midlands, 1930s and meant to be brilliant; it's on my Christmas list--The Herbalist.  Regina and I had a lovely drink or two with herself and her partner Paul and she is now up for overall Irish Book of the Year.  Vote here!
Anyway, a great night was had by me and my beloved.  Not a lot of writing got done the next day, it must be said...but Manchester United beat Bayern Leverkusen (sic) 5 nil. Two great days in a row...