There May Be Troubles Ahead

Adrian McKinty is on a flying visit home. In the past couple of months snowy Seattle is where he has been laying his presumably woolly hat, but for the last few years Melbourne has been home. It’s a world – or worlds – away from Carrickfergus, where he grew up.

It’s a cold day and we’re drinking good, strong Irish tea because like all ex-pats, McKinty misses the culinary tastes of home.
“I get a lot of those food and drink memory moments, stuff that you can’t get. In Australia the cuisine is very different, and in America too. A lot of those things are big cultural touchstones.”
Talking of cultural touchstones, a number of chapters in McKinty’s latest book, I Hear The Sirens In The Streets, are named after songs. The opening chapter is called ‘A Town Called Malice’ – succinctly bringing the reader straight into the grim and grey ‘80s.
“I was talking to Irvine Welsh years and years ago, and he was telling me that he compiles a playlist that he listens to while he’s writing. He was saying that when he was writing Trainspotting he was listening to a lot of Iggy Pop, which actually made it into the film. I thought that was strange because I have to have complete silence. But I love music. I have a big and dirty record collection and CD collection.”
Like McKinty, his protagonist Sean Duffy is a music lover, and Sean’s record collection allowed the author to pay tribute to the music that inspired him in his younger years.
“I wanted to make him a record nerd and a collector so I could give him a lot of my records. I had a lot of fun with that. I really enjoyed going back into and embracing that whole culture. One of the things I did was research British hit singles from the early ‘80s. I say research – it was more like five seconds with Google!” he laughs.
“The hit singles from that era were just awful! Things like Kajagoogoo – that was number one. How was that possible?” As a music lover, that fact makes McKinty both incredulous and indignant.
“The album charts were really quite interesting. There were other musical trends going on in the background. It was the start of the whole Manchester scene. You had The Fall and the beginnings of New Order, Happy Mondays and The Smiths. There’s a very nerdy Morrissey shout out because there is a minor character reading The Cramps fanzine from April 1982 and that issue was edited by Morrissey.”
When he was shaping Duffy, McKinty decided that they would share a number of characteristics besides a mutual appreciation of music.
“He lives in the house where I was born and grew up and he is living on my street. A lot of my neighbours from 1980, ’81, ’82 are in as characters, but with different names so we don’t get sued!
“He also shares my love of literature. One of the criticisms I always get is that my characters have read too many books. I don’t think it is that unusual for Northern Ireland at the time. I remember when I was a kid everybody was reading. Back then people were swapping books and talking about books. It’s not like nowadays where reading is a minority taste enjoyed by a small bunch of cultists who are actually buying books.”
Talking about buying books, publishers were convinced that nobody would buy novels set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.
“I had been ducking writing about Northern Ireland for ages,” admits McKinty.
“I had written about New York, I have a book set in Cuba and a couple in Denver. I think there was this conspiracy of silence – ‘Let’s not talk about those terrible things’ – and I sort of bought into that, thought things were best ignored and swept under the rug. You know the old Belfast expression – ‘Whatever you say, say nothing.’
“But then about two years ago I started writing the first page of The Cold, Cold Ground and I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is set in 1981! What am I doing?’ I wrote a page and another page and before I really knew what was happening I had written a hundred pages. I think it was because agents and publishers had been telling me not to write about Northern Ireland and the Troubles. It was sheer perversity but that’s what writers are supposed to do, to go to the places where nobody wants to go – to go into the ellipses, into the silences.”
Both Sean Duffy novels tie into historical events in Northern Ireland. The Cold, Cold Ground includes a fictitious reworking of Freddie Scappattici, the infamous informer Stakeknife. In Sirens, John DeLorean and the DeLorean Motor Company make an appearance.
“Real characters started appearing in the book. Not just people I knew, but historical characters, some of whom are still alive. I had to change some names. There were a couple of speeches by Gerry Adams which we had to put through the libel lawyers to make sure I wasn’t going to be sued because they were words I was putting in his mouth.”
“With the second book I knew I wanted to write about DeLorean from the start. As a kid I had gone on a trip to the DeLorean car plant and we were told that this car was going to save Belfast and Northern Ireland and maybe the whole of Ireland. And it was all a lie! The cars were crap; they were shoddily made; they were absolutely terrible cars!
“It’s such a fascinating story and DeLorean is such an amazing figure. He sets up this car company in west Belfast during the Troubles; there are IRA bomb threats; the whole thing is scammy; he defrauds the British taxpayer of millions; and then he tries to save his own company by becoming an international cocaine dealer. It’s fantastic! Why isn’t that a Hollywood movie? It’s stranger than fiction!”

I Hear The Sirens In The Streets is out now, published by Serpent’s Tail.