Gerard Cappa

The Irish proverb says “Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine” – we live in each other's shadows. This is an observation that we depend on each other, and should therefore be benevolent and supportive of other people. It could also mean that none of us are the autonomous individualists as idealized by modern western culture – the free thinking independent, responsible only to our individual conscience which we have each created in isolation.

 I was born in the north of Ireland in 1959, and was therefore 10 years old when the Troubles restarted in 1969. My Maknazpy books are by no means ‘Troubles’ books, nor are they an attempt by me to rationalize or give my version of who are the heroes and who the traitors. For one thing, I don’t feel entitled to bend my characters to suit that purpose. For another, I must confess to feeling an unease, even a slight antagonism, when I read some other books that handle the subject badly, or lazily: too many lives were damaged, too many survivors still hurt, to excuse the comic book narratives that exploit their suffering and do justice to no-one.

 Like every other 10 year old, I learned to live a life we thought was normal, even if that normality was a heady fusion of the shadow cast by warrior-heroes, the baggage of competing cultural realities and our collective premonition that it would get worse before it would get better. 

Anyway, fifty something years later, and it is better. Not perfect, maybe a work in progress, but better, and good enough to permit me to delve into some of those notions of free will, predetermination and the influence of our hand me down attitudes.

Of course, it isn’t only the Irish who receive cultural certainties, and I hope my writing creaks open the lid to shed a little doubt on the self-confirming shibboleths that turn slogans into war cries across the east/west divide.

 I only read Irish books when I was younger - James Stephens, Flann O'Brien, Michael McLaverty, John McGahern, John Banville, the Blasket books. Or else Irish politics, history and philosophy.

 I must have lightened up a bit later on, that's when I started reading about murder as entertainment. The American classics, of course; Hammett, Chandler, Cain, Himes, Parker, Macdonald, Thompson, George V Higgins. Then Ellroy, Mosley, Burke, Ian Rankin, John Harvey then all the Scandanavians, and my favorite of them all, William McIlvanney and his 'Laidlaw' series - enough to discourage any ordinary writer.

 I started to write The Maknazpy books as standard thrillers, no big messages. Then I realized I couldn't help it, all that stuff about being an underdog, free will limited by inherited cultural baggage and everyone's basic human right to be treated with dignity, it was all bound to come out. 

The great Raymond Chandler said, "Mystery and the solution of the mystery are only what I call 'the olive in the Martini'. The really good mystery is one you would read even if you knew somebody had torn out the last chapter."

 I don't even try to write like Chandler at all but I do aspire to create real characters with all the imperfections and weaknesses of humankind so the reader shouldn't expect nice neat solutions or to find 'likeable' characters upholding a particular moral code. As one of my reviewers commented, "There are no good guys and you never know which bad guy is going to show up next".