Noir and the Irish Nation : Contesting Irishness in Crime Fiction

Examining the rise of Irish crime novels in the twenty-first century, Maureen Reddy argues that writers such as Ken Bruen, Benjamin Black, Tana French, Niamh O’Connor, Cormac Millar, Stuart Neville, Brian McGilloway, Declan Hughes, and Declan Burke are collectively working through the problem of defining Irishness and grappling with deep anxieties about a society that is rapidly changing in the face of a globalized, late capitalist culture.

Although several Irish writers produced crime novels before 2000, most of these books were set outside Ireland and brought out by non-Irish publishing houses. This situation changed radically in the early years of the twenty-first century when numerous novels and series set in Ireland and written by Irish authors were published and began generating strong sales at home and abroad. Maureen Reddy examines this phenomenon, analyzing the conditions that gave rise to it and the commonalities among the novels. Reddy places what she calls Hibernian Noir in the context of the social and economic conditions in Ireland from 1998 to 2012 and relates that period to the post-World War I United States that gave rise to hardboiled detective fiction. As Reddy shows, Irish hardboiled fiction participates in the genre’s tradition of placing previously marginalized individuals in positions of narrative authority. At the same time, Reddy argues that writers such as Ken Bruen, Benjamin Black, Tana French, Niamh O’Connor, Cormac Millar, Stuart Neville, Brian McGilloway, Declan Hughes, and Declan Burke are collectively working through the problem of defining Irishness and grappling with deep anxieties about a society that is rapidly changing in the face of a globalized, late capitalist culture.