‘We tend to have our detectives overcome every battle… but some you just can’t win’
Author Brian Mcgilloway talks to Aine Toner about Northern Irish noir, plot twists and the importance of a writing community
IT’S definitely something that has kind of exploded.” Author and teacher Brian Mcgilloway is speaking about the rise in Northern Irish noir, a genre of fiction that is increasingly attracting a plethora of loyal readers.
A New York Times bestselling author, the Strabane based writer has written 11 books including the successful Garda Inspector Ben Devlin mysteries and DS Lucy Black series.
“I started writing Borderlands, the first of the Ben Devlin books, in 2002 and at stage, there was a handful of people,” he says of local writers within the genre. “Most of the stuff that was probably coming from here was Troubles based, with the exception of some of those writers.
“The very early events when you were doing Northern Irish crime panels, it was the same three or four of us. Now, there’s just there’s such a big community of writers, which is great.
“I think it’s almost inevitable,” he says of NI noir’s popularity.
“I suppose part of the appeal of it, is for me, that crime writing is very much a kind of state of the nation: it should reflect something about the society which is producing it.”
His latest novel Blood Ties was released late last month, and for Brian, the crime narrative structure is both forward looking and backward looking — something that is immediately relevant to Northern Ireland.
“The story starts at the end of something,” he says. “And then as the detectives are moving forward, they are constantly looking backward to try to work out how they got to the start of a book.
“The dual structure and for me, for Northern Ireland, is the obvious vehicle because we are trying to move forward but we’re also on the look backwards to try to work out how we got to where we had got to.
“I’m not massively surprised so many of the writers that are kind of emerging in Northern Ireland are using crime or the crime genre which is a very wide church, to try to explore the place.”
Justice is an important factor – both in crime writing from a reader point of view and bearing in mind the North’s history.
“There’s a real sense here among various people for various reasons that maybe justice hasn’t been done,” says Brian.
“The whole point of a crime novel is that some form of justice is done at the end of the day. That’s the pleasure of the crime novel; that good people get what they deserve and bad people get their punishments.
“I can kind of see why there is an appeal to that. That was the appeal to me when I started to write. I didn’t want to read about the Troubles, I didn’t want to write about Northern Ireland as such but I still found myself wanting to write a story where there was a sense of somebody who knew what was right and who was going to do what was right.”
In Blood Ties, readers are returned to Garda Ben Devlin’s life while he juggles personal responsibilities with a puzzling and very troubling case.
A man has been stabbed to death — someone who had previously spent over a decade in prison for murder — but the culprit, given the evidence found, cannot be responsible.
We won’t spoil it for readers but suffice to say, this conundrum is something that will keep you as entertained and enthralled as it does Devlin and his team.
It’s been almost a decade since fans of Devlin have been treated to his solving a case — Brian says there are a “whole number of reasons” for the gap.
“A couple of the Lucy books I’d written I’d started as a Devlin and the story didn’t work, it didn’t fit his world.
“I kind of joke that he stopped speaking to me,” he laughs.
This sense of closeness between writer and protagonist is important, particularly as Brian considers the Devlin books as being more ‘personal.’
“I started [writing] with Devlin and his voice is probably not dissimilar to mine.
“Our actions are probably different but his kind of tone, and the way that I hear him when I’m writing, is probably quite close to my own voice.
“He has always reflected what’s been going on in my life.
“So whenever I wrote the first book, my wife and I were only married a year and she was expecting our first child.
“So Devlin in the first book has a baby and he’s trying to balance being a good husband and a good father and his sense of responsibility to his community and trying to be a Garda.
“That at that time really interested me: how does he go out and work with a dead body at a crime scene and then go home and change a nappy on a baby, and try to balance those different responsibilities.
“For this book, I lost my father a few years back and I wanted to write about that. Devlin has always been that character for me, where I could write about and work out how I felt about things.
‘Devlin in the first book has a baby and he’s trying to balance being a good husband and a good father and his sense of responsibility’
It was almost kind of inevitable that I was going to use Devlin as a way to look at grief and loss.
“I think the Brexit vote also… for a while, the border kind of vanished for a lot of us, it was almost out of sight, out of mind. I do think the Brexit thing has stirred up that awareness of the border and identity and the book is primarily about identity.”
The border is almost another character in Blood Ties.
In the first Devlin book, Borderlands, a mention is made about the Garda crossing backwards and forwards over the border — “which he does with impunity throughout the series” says Brian.
“By the later books, nobody ever questions it but in this book, I thought, people would be questioning it now. People would say, ‘They’re not allowed here, you’re not allowed there.’
“It’s more of a thing in this book than it has been in the past couple, and that’s a reflection, I think, of the fact that we are more aware. The subsequent books will probably have to look at what the impact will be as we move forward as well.”
Beautifully written, Brian’s books offer a flow and lyricism that is quite different to many thrillers. By being caught up in the writing, you’re automatically — and satisfyingly — amid the investigation, the questioning of potential suspects and the final unmasking of the truth.
Covid too is another character to be found in Blood Ties, albeit a silent one.
“I didn’t set out to write a Covid book,” he says. “Somebody asked me last year if I was going to write a book about the pandemic and I said, ‘Why would I? Everybody’s living it, why would anyone want to read about it?’
“But then when I started writing this, the prologue is set at the end, March 20 [2020]. Devlin has said that he has lost his father and the book is detailing how that’s going to happen. You know how that’s going to end.
“As I was writing it, it made sense to set it in the week or two before the lockdown really happened. You can see the date and you know what’s coming.
“Hopefully people will have a sense of there’s something bad coming, and it’s inevitable, and no matter what you do, no matter how hard anybody tries, it can’t be avoided.
“Particularly with crime novels, we tend to have our detectives overcome every problem and win every battle and catch every baddie. But there are some battles that you don’t win and can’t win.”
Crime lovers have come to expect a twist, something echoed by author Claire Allan earlier this year when she spoke to the Belfast Telegraph.
“The book develops as it goes along,” says Brian when asked about plotting and plot twists.
“I tend not to plan. I probably should, I probably should plan a lot more but it tends to be where the characters take me.
“I find if I have a plan or really clear idea of where I’m looking to go, I’ll start writing scenes where the characters will behave in ways that I haven’t believed, just because I’m trying to get to a certain point. And I’ll end up rewriting, because it’s not in keeping with the character.”
He acknowledges that, as crime readers especially have become “savvy about picking up details,” a pressure does exist to ensure the ending isn’t too obvious.
“When I was writing Little Girl Lost [the first in DS Lucy Black series], it was one of the only books where I knew how it was going to end,” he says.
“About three quarters of the way through, I changed the ending because I was worried I had made it too obvious as to who the baddie was.
“Last year, [novel] The Last Crossing begins with the crime being committed and you see everybody who did it. In a way, it almost takes a wee bit of pressure off, it’s like Columbo, it’s more like a whydunnit than a whodunnit.
“There’s obviously a pressure and you’re aware of the readership, but primarily I write for myself. I know that sounds really selfish but I love crime fiction, I love reading and books. So I write something that I would want to read and that I would love and it is led by the characters and what is true to the characters’ behaviour.
“You kind of hope, you’ll be able to add in enough layers of conflict and obstacle that will keep the reader guessing.”
The beauty for crime readers — and consequently crime authors — is that a reader can leapfrog to another author and also enjoy their books.
“Crime readers especially do not buy one book a year,” he says with a smile.
“People who read in general but people who read crime in particular are not buying a single book a year so it’s not a competition for one reader. It’s very much a rising tide floats all boats.
“The more people are reading crime writing from here, and if you think of [TV show] Bloodlands and [upcoming show] Blue Lights, and the more it normalises that crime fiction from here can be enjoyable and something really accessible, that’s great for all of us. Plus, they’re all really good friends and you want them to do well.”
The sense of a writing community is something that is apparent as Brian speaks, something that’s just as vital when things are bad as well as good.
“As with everything, there’s peaks and troughs. For every writer, there’s times when your career is going better and times when your career hits a bit of a wall and your other writer friends are there to support you during the lulls and celebrate with you during the highs and you do the same with them.
“Whenever my dad passed away, Steve [Cavanagh] and Stuart [Neville] and Dave Torrance came to the funeral. It’s the wee things like that that matter more than the books or the bestseller lists or anything else.”
The English teacher in Holy Cross Strabane took time out from teaching a couple of years ago to write full-time.
“I really missed teaching, I missed the social aspect of it,” he says of returning to the classroom. “I had trained myself almost into… I kind of feel a compulsion to write and as long as I get a chapter done a day, that’s the itch scratched if you like.
“I found that when I was writing full time, I was still only doing a chapter a day — and then I was twiddling my thumbs wondering what to do.
“I love books and talking about books and there’s no greater privilege than introducing kids to books for the first time.
“Increasingly, I was rather silly in thinking that as my kids got older, the demands on time would lessen a bit. That’s not true,” he laughs.
“It is tiring and it is difficult but it also is what it is. It’s not digging ditches. There are other people doing much harder, much more worthy jobs so I’m not going to complain about it.”
Will we continue to see more Ben Devlin books in the future?
“I love writing in Devlin’s voice; I enjoy that voice and enjoy hearing the tone as I’m writing, in my head. It’s a very pleasant way to spend time at the computer,” says Brian. “I certainly intend to come back to him as often as people want to read about him.
“I’ll still probably keep writing Devlin books as long as I want to read them and as long as I’m interested in hearing what his views are on the things that concern him.”
Brian will be a guest panellist in June for the launch of Translink’s Novel Journeys, a virtual bookclub that celebrates the benefits of reading. In partnership with No Alibis bookstore, it’ll bring a monthly recommendation of a title readers can enjoy with a virtual event every three months.
“Anything that’s encouraging people not only to read but to use public transport, that taking care of the environment, every part of it is good,” says Brian on his involvement.
“I think particularly at the minute, writing is all about connection, about connecting with one another and sharing our experiences, particularly at the minute where we’re all so isolated and everybody’s been kept away. Even in a virtual sense, it’s bringing people together and sharing their experiences and their passions for reading can only be good.”
‘There’s no greater privilege than introducing kids to books for the first time’
‘I think particularly at the minute, writing is all about connection, about connecting with one another and sharing our experiences’