Monday, August 31, 2009

Adrian McKinty on Radio New Zealand this Wednesday

Irish-born, Oxford-educated, author Adrian McKinty, who sparked his writing career while living for several years in the USA, but now lives in Melbourne, Australia, will be appearing on Bryan Crump's Radio New Zealand show this Wednesday evening.

McKinty told me he'll be "talking about crime fiction and possibly my own contributions to the genre" on Crump's "Nights" programme (7pm-12am). I understand such interviews are usually broadcast shortly after the 7pm news - see http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/nights for more general information about Crump's show.

McKinty has written nine novels since 1998 (including two trilogies) - the latest being FIFTY GRAND, which was published earlier this year. His latest is a hard-edged noir about a female police detective from Cuba who travels illegally to Fairview, Colorado, hoping to make sense of her father’s death in an apparent hit-and-run on a frozen mountain road.

In a 2008 interview with Declan Burke, McKinty said: "FIFTY GRAND came about from an eye-opening visit to Cuba. I went there primarily to see some literary sights connected with Ernest Hemingway, Jose Marti and Garcia Lorca but I very quickly got sucked into the landscape and culture. The place really gets into your blood and I found that I couldn’t shake it, so I went back for a longer deeper visit. All island peoples are unique in their own way and coming from Ireland - which has a big neighbour right next door too - I think I appreciated Cuba’s problems without excusing the current regime who seemed to have screwed up the country in a spectacular way. Once I had the context and the geography, the story just flowed from there. I live in the mountains of Colorado so I thought it might be fun to take a Cuban cop and throw him way out of [his element] ten thousand feet up in the snow."

You can read more of that interview at: http://crimealwayspays.blogspot.com/2008/04/new-hope-for-dead.html, and you can read a review of FIFTY GRAND at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/08/fifty-grand-adrian-mckinty-review

McKinty is an exciting voice in crime fiction, and it should be an interesting interview on Wednesday - I will link to the audio file if they archive it afterwards. Have you read any of Adrian McKinty's novels? What do you think of his writing?

2 comments:

  1. Hey thanks for the good word brother. Yup I'll be waffling about something or other. If its not interesting just call in and insult me, I can take it.

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  2. Ack, I'm out at a book launch & then a kids thingie, I'll have to catch the podcast.

    Hey Adrian, waffle's good. Waffle kids most listeners into thinking you know what you're talking about, well, that's the hope I cling to.

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