Book review: Joe Ide’s IQ brings Californian crime fiction to the 21st-century: When he was growing up in South Central Los Angeles, Japanese-American author Joe Ide’s favourite stories were from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series. It’s a long way from California to Baker Street, so for his debut, Ide has brought Sherlock Holmes to the mean streets of East Long Beach, in the guise of charismatic loner and unlicensed detective Isaiah Quintabe. IQ. Get it?
Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Fiction: Seven leading practitioners of Green Noir will visit Glucksman Ireland House to discuss the angles and the clues, the plots and counterplots, the dark journeys and the struggles for the truth that energize some of the most exciting writing coming out of contemporary Ireland.
Swann’s way: David Whish-Wilson believes the line between good and evil is blurred — even if he doesn’t actually believe in good and evil. “This is something I try to explore in all of my books,” the crime fiction writer and creative writing teacher says over a cold beer at Fremantle’s Buffalo Club. “It dates back to a period in my life when, as a younger man, I deliberately put myself in extreme situations, trying to figure out who I was and how I ticked and what my deep moral core consisted of.
Phillip Thompson 