More March madness

Maybe it's because I'm tired of all the lousy weather or the fact that it's Leap Year, but I continually think about March and what it will bring.

Yesterday, I was thinking St. Patrick's Day and that, of course, led me to Irish mysteries. What would I suggest for a suitable (or unsuitable) tribute to the snake driver?

First, there's Christine Falls, Benjamin Black's '50s era Dublin noir featuring Quirke, a larger -than-life pathologist out to discover how the eponymous woman met her death and what happened to her child. Things get murkier for Quirke as he indulges too much at his favorite pub and endures pressure from within his family and from without. A great read whether you like mysteries or not. Upcoming is The Silver Swan, a sequel also featuring Quirke.

Some of my favorite Ireland-centric mysteries are the series about Chief Inspector Peter McGarr, written by Bartholomew Gill. Through the years Gill has given us a continually well- written series, including Death in Dublin, The Death of an Irish Tradition, The Death of an Irish Lass, The Death of an Irish Consul and The Death of an Irish Lover, to name a few. You don't see these books around much, but they are still in print and that's a blessing.

For historical mysteries, I don't have to go any further than Peter Tremayne whose 7th century tales of Sister Fidelma has been delighting readers for a decade. In the latest entry, A Prayer for the Damned, Fidelma of Cashel and Eadulf are preparing for their upcoming nuptials when a murder of a fanatical abbott puts the on one of the wedding guests.

And, of course, you can't get more Irish than Ken Bruen's Priest in which Father Joyce is decapitated in the confessional of a Galway church. And we can expect more Galway mayhem come March with Cross, which brings protagonist Jack Taylor face-to-face with another horrific case.

And while you're at it take a look at Dublin Noir: The Celtic Tiger vs. the Ugly American, in which Ken Bruen edits works set in Dublin by authors Eoin Colfer, Jason Starr, Laura Lippman, Olen Steinhauer, Peter Spiegelman, kevin Wignall, Jim Fusilli, Charlie Stella, Ray Banks and others. It's sort of a hands-across-the-Irish-Sea collection of short stories all set in the city of sweet Molly Malone.

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Writers I'd like to see back in print: Gemma O'Connor, who's mystery novels Following the Wake and Walking on Water, are nowhere to be found.

Black heart

Loved Christine Falls and can't wait for Quirke to return in The Silver Swan (to be release March 4). Well, author Benjamin Black (aka John Banville) is back in print in the Sunday New York Times. The Sunday serial is called The Lemur and if you want to read it before Picador gets it on the bookshelves in June 2008, all you need to do is to go to: http://www.benjaminblackbooks.com/news.htm and click through to the New York Times pages. The serialization began Jan. 13 and currently three chapters are online with, presumably, more to come.

Booker Man Prize-winner Banville has certainly offered mystery before (The Book of Evidence about a confessed murderer) and an exploration of secrets (The Shroud). What a splendid writer; always intelligent, literate, exciting. And what a surprise that the pseudenonymously penned Christine Falls would bring the award-winning Irish writer the recognition in the States he's deserved for so long.