While I was planning the series, a couple of things were crystal clear in my head.
Jack would always go down the dark streets of the history we’d kept under wraps, like the Magdalen laundries. I grew up right beside them and knew firsthand of the horrors therein.
It was an Irish series, so there had to be a priest, a recurring character, but I didn’t want your lovable Barry Fitzgerald gombeen of The Quiet Man. I wanted a flawed human version to whom priesthood was simply a job, and one he didn’t especially care for.
When I was a child, the country was so poor, for many the only hope of education was by joining the priesthood. Callow youths, like cannon fodder, they went, as it was their mothers’ wish.
What an awful burden to lay on any child. No wonder they went nuts.
Fr. Malachy would always be Jack’s nemesis and, like the best of enemies, they even joined uneasy forces for Priest.
I knew from the off that this series was going to get me into all sorts of shite in Ireland and so went completely for broke.
Jack’s mother.
Like Italians and the other Europeans, we love our mothers… Never no mind she might be the biggest bitch who ever walked the planet, Irish boys love their mammy.
Fook that.
Jack loathed his mother and never tried to hide it. She was everything that is worst about our country.
Pious
Sanctimonious
A hypocrite
And a mouth on her
And worst of all… long-suffering, though she instigated most of the suffering.
Jack was having none of it, took her on from the get-go, and it seemed natural her staunchest ally would be Fr. Malachy… a match made only in the malice of Ireland.
Naturally, readers presumed Jack’s mother was based on my own, as if even I have that kind of cojones.
My mother was once asked what she thought of the series, said,
“I never read him.”
Nor did she.
Ever.
Bitter?
Not really.
I grew up in a house where books and reading were regarded as not only a waste of time but a waste of money.
God forbid you ever waste money.
My mother, Lord rest her, said,
“Ken lives in a separate room from the rest of us.”
She was right.
By one of those odd coincidences, when Jack’s mother had a stroke, so did mine, so all that Jack experienced then is based on what I was going through.
It’s been eerie with the series like that.
The Killing of the Tinkers, I had a young psycho beheading swans. The swans are to Galway what the apes are to Gibraltar, though a little more attractive to look at.
My publisher was horrified, said,
“You can’t do that!”
Notice how often that crops up in my career.
You can’t.
You daren’t.
You shouldn’t.
I refused to back down, and just before the book was published, some lunatic began disemboweling the swans.
I sent my publisher the article, and he said,
“Okay… long as it’s not you doing it.”
I confuse people, not deliberately, but they read the books, thank god! (How Irish is that?) with the darkness, ferocity, brutality, and then they meet me and I’m mellow, easy to be with, and they’re a tad bewildered.
A tad
is my nod to my UK readers, the two of them.
I reserve my murderous intent for my work.
Which brings me along to the violence I’ve been crucified for.
I never dwell on it, but it’s there, explicit, and no doubt about what happens. It’s ugly, fast, and very intense.
As all violence is.
Last November, I was at a book launch. A guy walked up and broke my jaw with a hurly.
Now, that is one very bad book review.
Will Jack do similar?
Already has.
Many times.
And that led me to the accusations of being pro-vigilante, a fascist, a supporter of all kinds of violent organizations.
You live in Galway, as I do, every single day, our latest horror, some thug walks free after raping an old lady, a seventy-nine-year-old nun, and the perp walks free, is given therapy, and in one ludicrous case, sent to Spain for a holiday.
I would love to say this is Irish exaggeration, but even in the past two years, my own personal history, a drunk driver who killed someone dear to my heart walked free because of personal problems.
The old people in Ireland used to say,
“Me blood boils.”
Jesus.
Mine wept… freaking buckets.
So, I put it on Jack.
Let him deal with it.
And he does.
Usually with a hurly.
Jack believes as I do.
“Law is for the courts; justice is administered in alleys.”
Controversial?
Of course.
In a society where there are no longer consequences, a hurly is a good edge.
One of me best friends, a doctor, has fretted for years about my views on so-called justice and the tone of my books.
He was, he said, my friend,
“Despite your, um… odd ideas.”
Three weeks ago, his daughter was very seriously mugged and he came round, not looking for solace, but for my hurly.
When I put Jack out there, I figured maybe three books, and lo and behold, I’m on number seven…
The bastard won’t go away.
Cross, the sixth, went another direction, had to if the series was to stay fresh and challenging.
More of a thriller element than any of the previous. It also showed the dying of the Celtic Tiger. We were plunging into recession after eight years of living it on the hog, and hog is the perfect term. It made us, indeed, greedy at the trough, and suddenly, they were taking it away. The sheen was off the tiger and we were… fook, in maybe financial trouble.
We reacted like any child that you spoil and then take away the toys. We reacted very, very badly.
Still do.
And Jack, no longer shopping in charity shops, might have to return to them.