Declan Hughes

Monday 16 March 2009

All The Dead Voices - Events

I'm doing a couple of Irish events over the next while to mark the publication of the fourth Ed Loy novel, All The Dead Voices, in Ireland and the UK (it's not out in the US until July). First up, I'll be reading with the splendid Brian McGilloway in Waterstone's, Dawson Street, Dublin on Tuesday, April 14th at 6.30. Then on Thursday the 16th, again with Brian, I'll be reading at David Torrans' wonderful No Alibis bookstore in Belfast at 7.oo. 
In May, I'll be appearing at CrimeFest in Bristol (May 14-17). I'll be on a panel on Thursday the 14th at 4.30, talking forgotten authors with Mary Andrea Clark, Barry Forshaw, Sarah Rayne and Martin Edwards. I suggested Margaret Millar, who is pretty much out of print everywhere now, and her husband Ken, who was once rather better known as Ross Macdonald, but who, despite my insistence on namechecking him everywhere I go to a degree that borders on the pathological, is largely forgotten these days - witness the recent Guardian list of crime novels you had to read before you died, which found room for five from Agatha Christie, four from Michael Dibdin and three from Ian Fleming but nothing from either Millar. 
I'll also be on a panel at 9.30 on Saturday morning with Gyles Brandreth, Judith Cutler, Andrew Pepper and David Stuart Davies called: Criss Cross: Conan-Doyle & Poe Anniversary Panel - Past & Present, which will discuss the evolution of the police procedural and PI sub-genres over the years.
In July, I'll be in Harrogate for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing  Festival, where I'll be taking part in a panel called Emerald Noir on Saturday July 25th at 10.30 am with fellow Irish crime writers Ken Bruen, Brian McGilloway, Gene Kerrigan and Ruth Dudley Edwards. Coupled with the fact that it's St. Patrick's Day tomorrow, I should probably round out this post with some kind of summons to celebratory glass-hoisting and such, and normally would, but I'm off booze for Lent this year. In theory, or at least, in Ireland, you're allowed Paddy's Day off Lent, but I don't think I'm going to avail of that particular indulgence. If I were anywhere else, you bet, but Paddy's Day in Dublin is like an advertisement for sobriety, an ugly, joyless festival of drunkenness. It's too close to home; it's all A Bit Too Irish.