In A June of Ordinary Murders, former Irish Times editor Brady inaugurates a historical mystery series, set in Victorian Ireland and starring Det. Sgt. Joe Swallow.
What led you to try your hand at fiction?
Three decades working as a news journalist and editor can pretty well strangle anyone’s linguistic creativity. Newspaper English is starchy, buttoned-up. So when I stepped down from 16 years as editor at the Irish Times, Ireland’s old and venerable newspaper of record, I wondered if any creative capacity had survived the experience. Hence, the coming into being of the Joe Swallow novels.
What was the switch like?
I found the transition to creative writing challenging. A journalist’s instinct is to pack in every detail he has researched, whereas the person reading a novel needs space to exercise the imagination. So I quickly learned that I didn’t have to describe every item of Joe Swallow’s clothing and what he had for breakfast. But carefully chosen detail helps to build atmosphere. The journalist’s instinct to accuracy can present unexpected difficulties when he turns to fiction. When I did my first draft of the novel, I assumed that June 1887 was like most Irish summers, wet, clammy, and rain sodden. But when I went to the weather archives I discovered it was a month of sunshine, record temperatures, and unbroken blue skies. It was so warm that the tram tracks expanded in St. Stephen’s Green, rendering the vehicles immobile until the cool of evening. So I had to rewrite quite a lot.
You have a family connection to the Irish police?
My grandfather William Brady was a member of the Royal Irish Constabulary, the police force that operated in the countryside outside of Dublin. Like most young, Catholic men who served in the RIC, he joined to make a living, as an alternative to emigration or scraping out a living on the poor soil of Ulster. His son, my father, was an active member of the Irish Volunteers, who signed on to assert Ireland’s right to independence, by force of arms if necessary. He trained as a teacher and then joined the police of the new Irish state, appointed as a superintendent at age 23.
What challenges did the Irish constabulary face in the 1880s?
A great many Irish people found themselves torn in their loyalties and their inclinations in these circumstances. The men of G-division of the Dublin Metropolitan Police, where Joe Swallow was a detective sergeant, were Irish, nearly all Catholic, and drawn in many cases from the small farming classes. But their superiors were British, mainly English or drawn from the Anglo-Irish Protestant ascendancy. Swallow is a conflicted man, an Irishman keeping his own people in control for the British administration.
